What Could Have Been Isn't What You Expected
by SJlikeslists
Summary: It's just your average Christmastime depression derailed by a mysterious visit piece.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _The Pretender_ is not mine.

The story is the same. I've just been doing some editing/correcting.

"Are you sure about that?" The female voice was quiet, unobtrusive sounding even, but the fact that he was hearing any voice at all was enough to make Jarod jerk upright from the small, kitchen table his unusually substance influenced brain had thought would make a good pillow.

There should not be any voices in this room for the simple reason that there should not be any other people in this room. Jarod should be alone - blissfully, utterly alone and, therefore, shrouded in silence. The fact that the silence was being interrupted meant that something had gone horribly wrong, which, he reflected, just meant that this day was ending on the exact same note on which it had begun.

He swung around to locate the origin of the voice and managed to hit the bottle he had left sitting on the edge of the table with his arm in the process. The laws of physics asserted themselves as it lost its precarious balance and shattered spectacularly when it met the floor. Broken pieces of glass bounced and scattered across the pale tile. The sticky liquid (dark in comparison) within ran out and pooled on the floor, but the puddle was small - an indication that most of the bottle's contents had already been ingested by the man now furiously scanning the room.

He was not sure who he had been expecting to see, but a young blond woman he was positive he had never seen before was not it.

"It doesn't matter now. I'm already here." She continued as if he had responded to her first statement. She looked down at the broken pieces of glass that had once formed the bottle and the liquid that surrounded them. A vaguely amused expression crossed her features as she looked back up at him. "Whoops," she commented in a tone that was anything but apologetic. She shrugged her shoulders before crossing her arms and leaning back as she coolly surveyed him.

Years of running had a few advantages he grudgingly admitted to himself. All that practice allowed him to assess the situation in the room before she had finished speaking. This place had been a bad choice. Scratch bad, this place had been an imbecilic choice. He had even been aware of that when he first entered, but he had not really cared at that point in time. The only thing that had mattered to him those few hours before had been getting into some place where he could be alone. He never would have stayed in a place without a contingency plan under normal circumstances, but he had been so rattled. He had just wanted to drown himself in the liquor and make himself forget the conversation he had just been through. Contingency plans had not even been on his radar. He had not cared enough to make one.

He was going to pay for that now. The never ending game he was trapped inside had hard and fast rules, and the first rule was that they never offered anyone any slack. They were always waiting, hovering, watching for you to make a mistake. Then, they pounced. It was so unfair. He had to be vigilant all the time. They only needed him to make one mistake. He was so tired of never being able to let down his guard. It almost was not worth it.

He shook off that thought. The list of things he had decided that he was no longer going to care about was long, but his freedom was not one of the items included on it. His life might be pathetic and miserable, but it was going to be pathetic and miserable out here in the real world where at least there was ice cream to offer a little comfort.

He refocused on his assessment of the room. It was a bleak prospect. She noticed his eyes darting back and forth across the space and commented on it. "You can't run away from me, Jarod."

Sadly, she was correct. That was why his eyes had still been searching. He had been hoping that he had missed something that would prove useful. There was only one door that led to the hallway, and the blond was standing in front of it. She was, in fact, leaning against the door frame as if she had been standing there since the beginning of time. He would have to make it to the opposite end of the room to get to the window, and while it could hardly be classified as a large room, he would still never make it if she was armed. He could not count on any unwillingness to shoot him if he made a run for it. He also had no clue what kind of backup she had brought with her. Her being arrogant enough to come alone was a possibility, but one whose chances were far too slim to even make exploring the option worth his time.

Pretending and being a quick study at finding solutions to problems were useful skills, but they had their limits. The problem with simming situations was that the outcomes you received were only as good as the information that you had to plug into the scenario. He was not even sure what scenario he was in, and this new person was a variable that needed to be defined. There were too many holes in his available intel that needed to be filled in before he could come to any conclusions. He needed more information before he made a move.

"Are you supposed to take me back?" She, the blond, was the best source for information available to him at the moment, and he needed to get her talking. He hated that his voice sounded so weak (any signs of weakness were sure to be exploited and used against him by whoever had caught up to him), but he was just so tired. It was more effort than he could convince himself to muster to mask his fatigue. She was new; she might actually think he needed less watching because of it.

Besides, he could blame the lapse on the hangover. Hangover? That was odd. Now that he stopped to think about it, he did not feel as though he was hung over (not that he had much basis for comparison). Shouldn't he be feeling groggy? Lethargic? Have some massive cranial pain? Something? He was confused and worried about the mess he had gotten himself into, but he felt otherwise normal. He gazed down at the mess on the floor. He had finished off the majority of that bottle, had he not?

The woman noticed the direction in which he was looking and chuckled softly to herself. He was surprised at how pleasant and good humored the sound was. Jarod would have expected it to be harsher or mocking. It was disconcerting to him somehow that it was not. She seemed as though she were someone who was difficult to read, and he did not like not being able to fit her into his established protocols. Her voice was not harsh or mocking either. It was friendly even (as if he was going to fall for that).

"I don't think you are off the hook for that. I imagine you are still going to be one very uncomfortable man come morning. You know," she continued in that same conversational tone of voice, "my sister-in-law is fond of saying that drinking is an exercise in futility. She always insists that your problems are still going to be waiting for you when you are done. If you are going to have to face them, why do it with a headache and nausea? Just between you and me, she is a bit of a goody goody."

She looked at him appraisingly as she paused. "I, on the other hand, am almost happy that you decided to spend your evening in a drunken stupor. That chronic insomnia of yours was starting to make me think that we were never going to get the chance to pursue this little adventure together. Have you bothered discussing that sleeping problem of yours with anyone? It can't be healthy, and they do have specialists for that."

While she was monologueing, Jarod attempted to scan the background noise to see if any of the inevitable sweepers would give away their position. They tended to do that if you knew what you were listening for - they were a collectively clumsy group (which was strange if you considered that their profession was one in which stealth should have been an asset or even a prerequisite). The only problem was that he could not detect any signs of sweepers in the background noise because now that he was focusing on hearing the sounds, he realized that there was not any background noise. Everything beyond himself and the blond was silent.

There should have been something - the sounds of passing traffic, the noise of neighbors through rather thin walls, any of the sounds that were requisite when you were in the midst of a few thousand other people should be audible, but there was nothing. He could not even hear the tell tale hum from the running of the refrigerator.

His already tense body tightened even further as a little bit of panic tried to force its way into his system. The lack of ambient noise was very, very wrong. It was like everything in the vicinity had been shut down. He had no reason to trust places that shut out the outside world. Was he already back at the Centre? Had they gotten to him while he was passed out at that table? Had there been enough time for that? How long, exactly, had he been out?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the blond's still friendly voice. "I am not from where you think I am from, and I am not here to hurt you. Honestly, why would I have even bothered to wake you up if that was why I was here?"

Jarod could think of a multitude of reasons for that particular course of action (sadism and gloating topping the list), but he figured that her question had been rhetorical in nature. Even if it had not been, he was not about to stand here making small talk. She could try to sound nonthreatening all she wanted; he was not going to forget that he was in danger. He also had not forgotten that she had dodged his earlier question about whether she was here to take him back.

Maybe because he already was back? Did she really think that he would simply take her word for it that she was not from the Centre? How would she even know where he was thinking she was from if that was not why she was here? She was looking at him expectantly. What was she expecting? He was the one who needed answers.

"Who are you?" His voice sounded steadier now, and that pleased him. He was not going to have to work at shaking off the exhaustion. The adrenaline was going to do it for him. The question seemed a safe enough way to reopen the conversation. He still needed her to talk. Hopefully, she would start slipping and grant him some details.

She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at him in response, and shook her head slowly before she spoke. "That is an interesting question, Jarod, but don't you think a more pertinent question for the situation at hand would be what am I doing here?" She went back to her expectant expression and waited.

Why did people always do that to him? Why was everyone always expecting something from him? They even expected him to provide the questions that they wanted the answers to before he answered them. No one ever answered questions for him. They dangled puzzle pieces just beyond his grasp and never let him see the finished picture. He was always supposed to be the one who figured everything out. Why was that? Oh, right, because he was the genius. There was no pressure there.

"I saw that eye roll." She commented still not moving from her position blocking the door. "I am glad to see it. It tells me that you are better off than I was afraid you were. People who have given up don't usually bother with sarcasm. It's too much trouble. It requires something like caring to conjure."

She paused, but Jarod chose not to respond. He expected her to continue talking when he did not answer her, but she surprised him. She simply held her stance in the doorway and waited. He was so tired of the games that everyone kept playing with him. He was done playing their games. He was not going to play any more. She could just deal with the silence.

Unfortunately, the silence did not seem to be bothering her at all. Her staring, on the other hand, was grating on Jarod's already frazzled nerves. He was tired, he was confused, and he just wanted this to be over. He could maintain his silent, untouchable high ground, or he could play a couple of rounds and get enough information to get himself out of this mess. It was capitulation, and he knew it. He hated that, but if it was the alternative to a one way ticket back to Delaware (or an extended stay if he was, in fact, already back in Delaware), then he was going to have to choose to play. It was inevitable like so many of the other aspects of his life that never seemed to come completely under his control. The sooner he figured out what was going on here, the sooner he could get back to what passed as an excuse for his life and whatever it was that he had been doing before.

He told that voice in the back of his head that whispered "wallowing in self-pity" to shut up and forced himself to make eye contact with the blond. Referring to her like that was getting old, but it was the most obvious descriptor to use for now. He gave her a once over in an attempt to gain any useful information.

Her clothes screamed designer label. He noted that her hair, make up, and nails were as immaculate as if she had just come sailing through the front doors of a salon. Her posture hinted at elegant, and there was something almost regal about the way she was standing there waiting for him to make his next move. It actually looked a little like she was a queen being forced to wait for a particularly slow peasant to catch on and complete his assigned task. That observation could have caused him to feel rather offended, but he was too busy trying to keep a smile off of his face.

Finally, something about this whole situation made sense. Ice queen was something with which he knew how to deal. At least, he used to think that he did. He pushed that thought away. He was not going to go there. He could not afford to get distracted right now. Besides, he was finished caring about that situation. Okay, he was not yet, but he would get there. It would just take some time. He would play this game her way for the moment.

He sighed and managed to push the words past his lips, "Why are you here?" He noticed that his voice once again sounded tired, but he seemed to have asked the right question to make the woman happy.

She clapped her hands together excitedly like a little girl and grinned at him as she finally stepped away from the doorway and into the room. Something about the way she wore the expression implied that she was not a person who chose a grin over a smirk very often, and he wished she had not chosen to make an exception on this particular occasion. Jarod did not like the way the grin fit her.

It was another one of those disconcerting pieces that did not mesh with the profile he was trying to create for her in his head. It made her look younger and almost innocent somehow. (Which might be why she did not do so very often, he found himself thinking? Looking innocent probably was not an asset when you were convincing someone to hire you to hunt people down like they were animals. Or maybe it was, it could fall into that category of lulling the prey into a false sense of security and all that. Kind of like she was doing with her whole 'I'm your friend just stopping by for a chat' tone of voice thing she was trying to pull. But would an innocent look inspire any confidence in the person that was doing the hiring? Wouldn't they want something a little more brutal?)

"Stop it!" He commanded himself so intensely that the words almost slipped passed out loud. They hadn't, had they? If they had, she was not saying anything to indicate that she had heard.

Couldn't he ever stop analyzing things? Couldn't his brain ever just shut down? He was not going to start wondering about this person who had come chasing him. She was hunting him. She had invaded his privacy. She had disturbed his solitude. She was a nonentity obstacle to be overcome. That was all. He would only ever know enough about her to help him get away from her. There would be no wondering. Wondering led to caring, and he was all done with caring. He would just play along and get his needed information and be on his way.

Hadn't he already decided that? Was he repeating himself? Was that a common side effect of drinking copious amounts of alcohol? Maybe he should ask the next time he called . . . No!

There was not going to be a next time. There was not going to be another phone call. There was not going to be any more _her_. That was just another thing in his life with which he was done.

"It's not going to work." Her voice was soft with an almost pitying inflection. Jarod merely lifted his head and looked at her. She interpreted his look as a question.

"I mean the trying to convince yourself that you don't care. It's not going to work, but we'll leave that conversation for later. Now that you are asking the appropriate questions we can get down to business. The answer to your question is very simple, Jarod, I am here to help you."

She paused again and looked at Jarod for a moment as if she was not sure how to phrase the next words that she was going to say to him. If she was thinking that there was something she could say that was suddenly going to set Jarod at ease with the situation, she was sorely mistaken.

The pitying inflection grew as an undercurrent in her voice in a way that Jarod found deeply annoying (or some of the things she was saying were hitting a little too close to home, but there was no way that he was going to admit that).

"I know that trusting people doesn't come easily for you. I get that. I get that better than you would ever dream that I would, but I am here to help. Do you even realize that you need help? When I first noticed you, I had hoped that things wouldn't have to spiral this far down. I'm thinking now, though, that you probably needed to hit rock before you were going to be ready to see any of the things that I am going to show you. You aren't in a good place right now, and that's okay. It happens to all of us. The important thing is that you have someone around to help pull you up when you fall. You seem to be lacking in that area at the moment. That is why I am here. You weight of the world on your shoulders hero types never seem to know when to ask for help. You seem to think that you aren't supposed to need it. It's like you think that the problem solver is never supposed to have problems. It's something in the way you all are wired that needs correcting. I should know. I've lived with one of you my entire life. I knew you wouldn't do any asking, so I eliminated that step for you. There's no need to ask for help. I'm just going to provide it. I don't know for sure if you are ready for this. I don't even know if it will make a difference. You may walk away from this experience without ever using anything that you learn. I hope it doesn't turn out that way, but I'm going to have to be okay with it if it does. I'll know that you had the chance at least. That's why I'm here - to give you the opportunity. What you decide to do with it is up to you."

Jarod pushed away the phrases that left him feeling uncomfortable and instead focused on the fact that much of what she said did not make any sense at all. What was wrong with her? Were they sending mental patients after him now?

Her voice became softer as she continued. "People tend to think that they have so much time, Jarod. The problem is that they don't always have nearly the amount of time that they think they do. I hate to see people wasting time. I hate to see people hurting because they don't realize that they are wasting time. I wasn't really sure how I was going to do this once I got here, but your conversation earlier gave me an idea. Do you remember that conversation?"

Jarod was so busy trying to block said conversation from replaying in his mind that it didn't occur to him to wonder how it was that she knew that it had taken place. He found himself nodding in reply to her question.

"Do you remember what you wished?" Again, he nodded. "I am here tonight, Jarod, to grant you that wish."


	2. Chapter 2

The television in the far corner sprang to life with a sharp crackling sound. A normal person would have jumped upon hearing the unexpected noise, but Jarod spun in response in a manner that betrayed him as someone who had spent an enormous amount of time looking over his shoulder.

He swept the area with his eyes and shifted to a defensive stance. He had let himself be lulled by the obvious sincerity in the blond's voice, but that did not change the fact that he had expected to find a sweeper staring him down when he looked in the direction of the television. There was nothing to be seen.

Strangely enough, the woman no longer put his nerves on edge. The situation was still making his skin crawl with nervous anticipation, but she, herself, was not. Years of crawling inside other people's heads had left him with a decent ability to read people (not that he never made mistakes in that area, a disturbed pyro-obsessed brunette came to mind as a stellar example of one of those occasions).

If he was reading this woman correctly, she had meant every word that she had just said to him. It was crazy, but she truly meant every nonsensical word. She thought she was here to help him. She was not overtly dangerous. She was definitely at least a little loopy with all her talk about granting wishes (but not an immediate threat).

No, she was not going to be the problem. The problem was going to be whoever it was that had sent her here in the first place. The question to be answered, then, was who was it that was calling the shots behind the scenes. It could be Lyle, the Triumvirate, even someone he had caught on a pretend (back when he was still doing that sort of thing) - the possibilities were so numerous that it was almost laughable.

He was going to have to bide his time to figure out the who (and maybe when he got there then more of the why would fall into place). This situation was not matching up with anyone's usual method of operation. This woman had to be a little unstable. What made them sure that they could control her? Why send someone who thought that they were helping him for that matter? Did they think he was naive enough to get taken in by such a paltry attempt?

If they did, that could only work to his advantage. Naive was no longer an adjective on the list of words that could be used to describe him. He would have thought that they would have figured that out long before now. Of course, he also would have thought that by now they would have realized that he was never going to quietly stay put for them.

While he was thinking, the woman had retrieved one of the straight-backed chairs from his table and moved it in front of the television set. When, exactly, had she accomplished that? He had not even noticed her moving. He was going to have to shake off his mental fatigue and remain more alert. Somewhere in the back of his head he noted that this left the door unprotected, but he decided not to pursue that avenue at present. He still did not know what was going on here or what (or who) he might be walking into out in the hallway. He had not filled in enough of those missing pieces of information yet.

His blond intruder (he really needed a name to correlate with his thoughts) was perched on the edge of his kitchen chair watching the movie that was playing on the television with an enraptured expression gracing her features. She seemed to sense that he had refocused his attention back to her, because she looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. Her voice was cheerful and pitched back into that casual conversation tone.

"I love holiday movies. I especially like the Christmas ones. Everything always ends in a happy little neatly tied package." Was he supposed to respond to that?

Apparently not, because she continued. "Have you seen this one, Jarod?" In the back of his mind, he had been processing the images flashing by on the screen. The mentions of 'bells ringing' and 'angel wings' conjured up memories from a lonely, sleepless Christmas past (some things never changed).

He nodded at her. What was wrong with his voice tonight? "That's good. If you are familiar with the concept, that should make what we are going to do tonight much easier for you to understand. We can skip over the background information."

She was not serious, was she? She was. She was looking at him with that expectant expression on her face again. It was bordering on obnoxious. One thing was very clear. Someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble with this whole set up. The blonde's mysterious appearance, the strangely self-starting television with the cheesy Christmas movie, her bizarre story of being present to 'help' him were all meant to add up to something, but that something was not something that was a remotely rational explanation.

It did not make any sense. They had caught up to him when he was vulnerable. They could have just grabbed him and gone. Why go to all this trouble? If they had grabbed and moved him (which the bizarre lack of sound made a distinct possibility), what purpose was being served by this whole arrangement? Why did they always have to play with him? Why couldn't they just stop the games? Did they want him to think that he had gone crazy? Was that the point? Was this just another scheme in their attempts to break him? He looked at the woman with narrowed eyes. In charge or not, not quite sane or not, she was going to start giving him some answers. He did not even bother with trying to keep the harshness out of his voice as he questioned her.

"Are you supposed to be some kind of an angel?"

She laughed at him, and he once again found himself fighting the thought that it was a pleasant sound. There was nothing pleasant in this situation. When she finished, her voice still held the tell tale signs of amusement.

"We both know that you intended that as an insult, but I'll answer your question any way. I'm not the expert on faith in the family, Jarod, but I am pretty sure that that is not how it works. I don't think people get to become angels. I'm fairly certain that they are their own unique aspect of creation. Besides, even if people did get to become angels, I'm thinking that they would need to be dead first. I happen to not be dead." She added so quietly that Jarod almost didn't hear her, "Not today anyway."

Had she been threatened? Was that how they had gotten her involved in this? He was only thinking about that as it pertained to helping him get away. Otherwise, he did not care. If he said it to himself enough, maybe it would finally catch. It really was not his fault, after all. Years of ingrained habit were bound to take some time to break, and he needed to keep focused. Well, she might be slightly less crazy than he had feared, but she still was not altogether there.

"Are you ready to go?" She was holding out her hand as if she expected him to reach out and take it. She actually thought that he was going to follow her somewhere? Seriously? Just what was wrong with her?

"Go?" The disbelief in his voice was palatable.

"Yes, Jarod, go." Impatience was creeping back into her voice, and she sounded for all the world like an exasperated parent answering a child's repeated question for the seventh time.

"Go where?" He questioned with enough impatience in his own tone to overshadow hers.

"I thought you told me you were familiar with the whole holiday movie concept?" She sighed as if she were barely restraining her impatience, and Jarod found himself wondering what it was that she had to be impatient about. He was the one who was not getting any answers. She was the one who already knew what was going on here. "I had hoped you were bright enough to figure this out yourself, so that we could skip over the cliched movie explanation conversation."

She gave him a look that was bordering on exasperation, but it felt as though it was not necessarily directed at him. "I hate giving explanations." She muttered more to herself than to him. Her stance shifted and Jarod noted that for someone who disliked explaining, she had her 'I am about to deliver a lecture. You do not interrupt me.' pose down to an art form. "You need to listen because I am only going to go through this process once. Me having to repeat myself will only be a waste of our time, and I'm not even sure how much time we are going to have. Besides, I hate wasting time. You said something tonight to someone that you care about - it was a wish of sorts."

Jarod started to interject an objection to what she was saying, but she shot him a warning glare that in combination with her 'lecturing' pose made him decide to bite his tongue for the moment. She made sure he had bitten the words back before she continued.

"Maybe you meant what you said, maybe you didn't. That doesn't matter now because done is done. You are getting an amazing opportunity tonight, Jarod. Some people waste huge chunks of their lives pondering the could haves instead of living the life that is sitting right in front of them. You are actually going to get to see what the could haves would have been."

Jarod looked at her for a long moment in silence. She was definitely not altogether there. Perhaps she could be snapped out of it? Just how unstable was she? Wait. How did she know what he had said to . . .No. He still was not going there.

How pathetic was he that he could not manage to keep to his resolve on things (he deliberately used that word to distance himself from the person) he was no longer going to think about or worry over for even a ten minute span of time? He had to do better than that.

He felt his shoulders slump even as he fought against the outward betrayal of his internal condition. He just could not do this anymore. It was never going to end, was it? Why couldn't he just be left alone? He was tired of the running and the fighting and the game playing. He was tired of the same cycle of half answers and more questions that never seemed to be resolved combined with the inevitable heart break of people he just could not seem to save. Mostly he was tired of having his hopes crushed every time the cycle repeated.

The exhaustion swept over him in waves, and he found himself unwilling to keep up the pretense that something was not deeply wrong with him. Let them think he was broken. Let them look for ways to exploit this new weakness he was displaying. It did not matter. Anything they tried to use against him was not going to work anymore because he simply did not have the will to care.

Maybe he had actually reached the tipping point that Sydney had seemed to fear. Maybe he was not going to make it in the outside world with his sanity intact. The fact of the matter was that insane out here was still better than sane in the Centre. As long as he got himself out of this trap in the end, nothing else was going to matter any longer.

He sighed as he looked up at the blond with eyes that were becoming duller by the moment. He could almost have sworn that he saw her wince, but that would not have made any sense. Did she think that he was going along with her assertions?

"Am I really supposed to believe all that?"

Her voice was unthreatening, almost soothing in its inflection, but her words were anything but pitying. "I told you earlier that I understood that you weren't going to trust me. I have no problem with that. I don't expect you to trust me. I would probably be a little worried if you did. The fact that you don't believe me is similarly irrelevant. I don't care if you believe me or not, Jarod. It doesn't matter what you believe because you are going to live this anyway. All I need from you is your attention."

"So, you are some sort of guardian, not angel, sent to help me. That's what I'm supposed to accept? I am supposed to blindly follow you around while you show me all the wonders of my life and oh how very much brighter of a place the universe is just because I am here to be in it. Does that about cover it?"

The sarcasm was dripping off the words so thickly that if he could have caught it, it would have put the measly puddle of alcohol staining the kitchen tiles to shame. Jarod found himself feeling rather proud that he had managed to sound so aloof. Aloof went with detached. Detached was good. Nothing could touch you when you were detached. If nothing could touch you, nothing could hurt you. That was win win all around.

"Cynical doesn't really become you, Jarod." She shook her head as if she were disappointed in him.

He was oh so very grieved that he hadn't risen to her expectations of entertainment. See, sarcasm was way better than wondering. It worked well at keeping him from thinking about other things. Of course, it was not as good as detached, but he had not had much time to adjust and get good at detached either.

Sarcasm would work for now. He was glad he had thought of it. She, on the other hand, was unimpressed with his accomplishment.

"Wow, somewhere along the way someone has clued you into the fact that you don't know everything, right?" When he didn't rise to her baiting, she continued. "The genius thinks he has everything all figured out. He thinks he knows what is what. This time the genius is wrong. I honestly don't know what it is you are going to be seeing tonight, but you need something to shake you out of this dark patch where you seem to be so determined to settle. "

She scanned the room with a rather disapproving air and leveled a challenging glance at him. "Are you going to seriously try to tell me that you have something better to do with your time?" She indicated the broken bottle with a flick of her wrist. "Because intoxication is working out so well for you so far?" She crossed her arms and waited. He would have to make some kind of response, and she knew it.

The blond had a point. It was just another pathetic reflection on his life that she was completely accurate in her assessment. He did not have anything better to do with his time. It seemed to be lost on her that he did not want anything better to do. That, apparently, was a moot point. He was not going to get a choice in the matter. He never got to have a choice in the matter. That was the reality of his existence. There was always someone else trying to pull the strings. There was always someone else starting another round of the cycle.

He was still trapped in the game, but she, at least, was a new level to play. He was making himself sick to his stomach even thinking about it, but it was how things were. He was that low, that desperate that the prospect of something, anything that would be different was actually appealing. He was going to play along, but the constant internal classifications of 'she' and 'the blond' were going to have to end here. He needed an appellation of some sort.

"Do you have a name?" She grinned at him again. He really wished that she would stop doing that.

"Well, Jarod no last name at the moment which is just as well because there is absolutely no way that I am going to tell you mine, I think you can call me Elle."

She was staring at him again. It was a challenge. She was trying to see if she could goad him into some sort of emotional reaction. Why did she seem to care so much about getting him to display his emotions?

Can call me Elle? He stopped himself from rolling his eyes when he realized that she was watching for that particular reaction.

He was going to play, but that did not mean he was going to make it easy for her. It was almost ironic that someone who expected him to trust her with what was quite literally his life was not willing to pull together enough reciprocation to offer him her actual first name. That was the kind of move that did not make sense in this scenario.

Even if she was not calling the shots, the person who had sent her should have drilled her enough to keep her from making slips like that. They knew that those things would keep him on his guard. Why would they be so sloppy?

Unless the point was to keep him on his guard? Why would they want that? Unless she really was not connected to anyone who was out to get him? Why else would anyone have come looking for him? Unless someone had truly decided that he needed help and had thought that this was the only way to get him to take it?

That thought was so absurd that Jarod was not even sure where it had originated, but he lost no time in shoving it out of his conscious thoughts. That was all the time he had before she was walking toward him.

"That's enough lollygagging. Let's blow this pop-sickle stand."

She reached out and captured his hand, and that was the last thing that Jarod had a chance to notice before everything went haywire.


	3. Chapter 3

Images flooded through Jarod's brain with all the gentleness of water rushing through a broken dam (which is to say that they crushed every other thought in their path). They pushed everything else out of the way until Jarod could think of nothing except what he was seeing and feeling. At first, he was only aware of bits and pieces that were somehow clearer than the others amidst an onslaught of attendant emotions. Frustration, fear, joy, impatience, anger, and relief all washed over him so quickly that he barely registered which emotion it was he was feeling before it was replaced with a new one. It was all moving so fast that he could not really process what was happening. How was he supposed to understand what was going on if it wouldn't slow down?

He tried to focus on what he was seeing one image at a time, but everything was going by too fast to be distinct. He tried to slow it down so that he could understand the process, but that only seemed to make things become more intense. He was already feeling dizzy from the speed at which the pictures were changing, but the reduction in speed when he tried to focus on one at a time somehow managed to make the feeling worse instead of better. That did not make any sense. The more he tried to focus on the individual emotions and pictures, the harder it became to keep himself separate from the onslaught.

There was an older woman in a hospital bed shouting Greek phrases at an exasperated looking nurse. Jarod lost himself in the woman's emotions. He felt out of control and afraid and as though his heart was about to come pounding out of his chest. Then, she was gone, replaced by a little girl twisting apart the halves of a cookie. Wistfulness descended upon him. He was missing someone so intensely that he thought the ache might bring him to his knees. He was worried for someone else, and he did not want to add to her sadness by letting his own show. The weight of that burden was slowly crushing him. The little girl was followed rapidly by a little boy throwing paper airplanes that could not seem to cross the threshold into actual flight. He was frustrated and angry. There was someone who should have been there to help him, but he had disappeared and he couldn't make him come back any more than he could make the planes fly.

The pictures kept coming - one right after another with no break in between, and no time to process what he was seeing. Worse still were the emotions. They were a jumbled up mess of those he had encountered along his travels, victims, perpetrators, and bystanders combined with his own emotional reactions to all of them. There were too many of them. They were all consuming, and he couldn't separate his own emotions from the others involved. He was exhausted from treading water, he was clutching his chest as he felt the beginnings of a heart attack, and he was panicking as his plane tumbled out of his control all at once. It was brutal. It was too much too fast. His head was going to explode, and he might actually be glad when it did. Then, this would have to stop. Just when the emotional intensity grew to such a pitch that Jarod was certain he was about to throw up, the rapid fire images and emotions came to a screeching halt. He sensed vaguely through the pain that someone had been holding his hand and was letting go.

He blinked open the eyes that he had unconsciously been squeezing shut in an unsuccessful attempt to make it all go away. The pain was not any better with light shining in his eyes. The first clear item that his brain registered was a person - Elle. If he could have mustered up anger through the pain, he would have.

"What . . . did . . ." his breathing was so labored he could barely force out the words, "you do . . . to . . . me?" His voice came out only slightly above a whisper.

It was partly because his lungs could not seem to pull in enough air, and it was partly because he was not altogether sure that any louder of a noise might not fracture his skull from the inside. The pounding behind his eyes increased another notch, and his hands instinctively went up to the sides of his head as if he were going to physically prevent it from breaking in two. The pain was so intense that he did not even register that he was still dizzy until he felt himself lurching to the side. He shifted his feet further apart in an attempt to maintain his balance against the spinning of the room, but he feared that he was eventually going to lose that battle. He tried to look at Elle, but it was an unsuccessful attempt. Either she was not standing still, or his eyes had temporarily lost their ability to focus. It could have been both. It was not worth the effort of figuring it out. He was more concerned with the impending explosion that was going to send his brain matter shooting out to decorate the walls (at least that's what it felt like was about to occur). Maybe he would be rendered unconscious soon? That would be nice.

Elle rolled her eyes (which Jarod missed completely due to his current lack of visual clarity) and shook her head (which he unfortunately did not miss because said motion did nothing positive for Jarod's unstable equilibrium). "Newbie," she muttered under her breath before raising her voice to a normal speaking tone (a tone that was far too loud for Jarod's liking). "I always forget how you all react to your first round. It's just a few triggered memories. It's no biggie."

"No biggie?" Jarod gasped out. His breathing was improving through sheer will power, but his head might just be getting worse. Was that possible? Obviously, it was. Elle was looking at him, but to be perfectly honest, he could not see her well enough to know whether or not the look was mocking.

"What is wrong with you?"

"What did you . . . do?" His eyes finally focused enough that he could tell that her expression was concerned.

"I think the question is what did you do, Jarod? You should not be in any pain. Come here." She moved toward him with her hands held out, and Jarod backed away from her. That was a bad move. He came within a hair's-breadth of finding himself face down on the floor.

"Stop that!" She ordered. "I can help you. Or did you want to walk around with a migraine for the foreseeable future?" This time she succeeded in placing her hands on his head, but it was not because he trusted her. Whatever had just happened had started with her touching him, and he had no desire to let her finish the job.

The simple fact of the matter was that he did not have it in him to make another sudden move away from her. The pain and dizziness were precluding any more movement on his part. She was doing something to his head, but he couldn't figure out what. It felt almost as if something were draining out of it. He couldn't hold in the sigh of relief as first the dizziness and then the pounding behind his eyes melted away. Elle's hands dropped, and she stepped a pace away from him. Her eyebrow was quirked upward in her questioning expression. "Better?"

"What are you?" The pain had faded, but Jarod's whole body was still tensed. There was something even more wrong here than he had originally thought (and he had originally thought that everything was wrong with this situation).

"A girl could be insulted by the implications of that question."

"What did you do to me?" Jarod ground out from between his clenched teeth with a sound that was more growl than human voice.

"Excuse me. That," she gestured toward Jarod's head, "was not my doing. You should have just rehashed a few moments of memories. They were your memories, Jarod. There was nothing that lives outside of your own mind. The problem was that you decided to try to pick them apart and analyze them. Don't you ever turn that off? Don't you ever relax? Can't you ever just let something be what it is? You triggered your own little meltdown there trying to process more things at once than it's possible to process. Next time just leave it alone, and don't try to do anything with it."

"There isn't going to be a next time."

Elle merely rolled her eyes as she turned on her heel and began to make her way down the hallway in which they were standing. She glanced over her shoulder at him and commented, "You are wasting time again."

For the first time, Jarod truly acknowledged that he was no longer standing in the dingy little room he had been calling home for the night. He was standing in a hallway of what was clearly some sort of residential medical facility. He knew this hallway. He had been here before. It was the Pleasant Valley home in which Sydney's brother had spent so many years before his death. Why was he here? Jacob was long since dead, and there was no one else he knew in this place. And more importantly, how had Elle gotten him here? Had he been drugged? Was that what whatever that was that had just happened to him was all about?

The immediate area was deserted except for Elle who had stopped in the doorway of what used to be Jacob's room. Did she expect him to follow her? Why was she always leaning up against door frames? Did she have some sort of back problem? Iron deficiency? Why was he wondering about her! He was not interested in knowing anything about her except what it was that she wanted from him this time. She was not looking at him. Her gaze was directed into the room, and her head was tilted in the same manner as when she had been watching that movie earlier. She was watching whoever was occupying the room. He was supposed to follow her. He was supposed to want to know what was going on in there. That was what she wanted, but what about what he wanted? He wanted to leave, but that was not going to come to pass until he figured a way out of this. His natural curiosity defeated his desire to stay uninvolved. After all, how was he going to get out of this, if he didn't know what was happening?

He approached the room with caution and slid past Elle in the doorway (being incredibly careful not to so much as brush against her on his way through). She may have fixed whatever it was that had gone wrong inside his head, but that did not change the fact that she had caused it to start. It made him a little nervous to have her out of his line of vision, but what he saw in the room temporarily overcame that feeling. It looked very like it had when he had visited some years back with the single addition of Sydney seated at the bedside. He was reading aloud from a hard cover book that lie across his lap. One hand was poised ready to turn the next page while the other hand rested gently atop the hand of the unresponsive man in the bed. It should not have been possible, but it was Jacob.

"Sydney?" Jarod asked tentatively. Maybe he could shed some light as to what was going on here. It was about time for someone to answer one of his questions. The person seated at the bedside continued his reading not even acknowledging the interruption. Had his voice been softer than he thought?

Elle interceded before he could try again to garner Sydney's attention. "He can't hear you. None of them will be able to hear you. You are officially inaudible, intangible, invisible and all those other in- prefixed words that mean that you cannot speak to, touch, interact, or in any other way meddle with what you see tonight. That'll be rough on you, won't it? You do dearly love to meddle. At least, the real you does." Jarod spun around to face Elle. She held up her hands in a defensive gesture. "It's not that there is anything wrong with meddling. I happen to be a world class meddler myself. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. I'm just warning you that tonight isn't going to be easy - not when you give up this pretense about not caring anymore."

Jarod ignored what she was saying and turned the conversation in his own direction. "Jacob is dead." He stated pointing at the figure on the bed. "What is this?"

Elle's voice had just a tinge of disappointment in it as she began. "Don't you ever listen? To anyone? Didn't we go through this already? We aren't in your world anymore, Jarod. This place shifted from yours at the point where Catherine Parker would have tried to rescue the children at the Centre. She didn't try here. We also backed up a bit. This is the year before what would have been your original escape from the Centre." She said it all as calmly as if she were simply repeating the forecast of the day's weather for him.

"What we've already gone through is the fact that I don't believe you. What are you doing to me? Who sent you?"

She shushed him and nodded toward Sydney's position. "You are missing what he is saying, and I am not repeating pieces of tonight just because you want to be sulky instead of paying attention."

Sulky? Sulky? He had had his privacy invaded, been kidnapped, and was currently stuck in the midst of some elaborate plot to make him think he had lost his mind. Sulky did not even begin to cover this situation.

Bits and pieces of what Sydney was saying managed to push their way past the turmoil in his brain. Phrases like "pushing for my retirement" and "never thought I would agree with Raines" caught his attention in spite of himself.

A young aide walked in with a cup of coffee and Jarod was at a loss as he got his first good look at Sydney as he turned to take the cup and thank her. He looked haggard and careworn and older than Jarod had ever seen him look. There were deep circles under his eyes which while fond enough as he exchanged a few pleasantries with the aide about his brother were overwhelmingly sad. He seemed weighted down and looked for all the world, Jarod realized with a start, like someone who was merely going through the motions of living instead of actually taking any active interest in doing so. He had never seen Sydney look like that.

"Sydney?" He tried again even though he knew good and well that neither Sydney nor the aide had seemed to notice the presence of two other people in the room. He turned on Elle again. "I want you to tell me what you are trying to do. I want you to take me back to where you found me. I don't know what kind of sick, twisted little power trip you are attempting to play here, but it isn't going to work. I am not going to get involved in whatever it is that you are trying to get me involved. I don't care about any messages or wishes or help or any of the other insanity you've been spouting off about. End it."

"Just listen, Jarod. What have you got to lose? If you really don't care, then nothing he says is going to make a difference to you anyway." Her voice was placating, but Jarod was not fooled by the trick of inflection. She was the one in control of this situation, and she would continue to play it however she wanted.

She had him, and she knew it. There was going to be no blustering his way out of the situation. He would have to let her have her way and let events run their course for now. The problem was it was awfully hard to stay detached while listening to the pain in Sydney's voice. He needed to stay detached.

"It is not as though I am accomplishing anything constructive. He has shut me out completely. I cannot seem to get through to him no matter what I say or do. I used to think that my involvement shielded him from the more unscrupulous personalities within the project. I used to think that I was protecting him from them, but this, this retreat into himself causes him far more damage than anyone else could ever inflict upon him. I don't know what to do. It has been eighteen years, and he shows no signs of improvement. The irony of the situation is that every time I find myself wanting to shake him, to tell him that he has spent far too long engulfed in his guilt, I think of you, and I know exactly why he does it. I only wish he could understand that it was not his fault. Maybe they are correct. Maybe it is time for me to leave."

Elle was trying to get his attention, but Jarod was ignoring her. What was Sydney talking about? He had always worked with Jarod. None of his other projects had been long standing. Sydney's voice was shaking, and Jarod would have gambled a hefty sum that his currently turned away eyes were tearing over. "He doesn't even want me there, but I don't want to abandon him. The two of you are all I have."

Jarod lost the progressively softer sound of Sydney's voice as he felt a tugging on his sleeve. Elle was talking over the sound of Sydney's voice. She was doing it purposefully. What was it she did not want him to hear?

". . . used him . . ."

"It's time to move on, Jarod." Jarod shook her off and tried to focus on the whispered words forgetting for a moment that he wasn't supposed to care (and that he didn't believe in what was happening for that matter).

" . . . could not possibly have known . . ."

"Jarod! We are leaving."

"I thought you wanted me to listen."

"You've heard enough."

" . . . death was a tragic . . ."

"I said now, Jarod. You don't care anyway, remember?"

She succeeded in grabbing his hand, and Jarod found himself yanked back into the chaotic confines of his mind.


	4. Chapter 4

Jarod was angrier than he had felt for a long time. He was angry that he had let himself get sucked into the details of the game, angry that he had allowed his stoicism to slip, and simultaneously angry that she was playing games within the game. She was hiding things from him. She was trying to keep him from understanding what was happening. Despite all her talk of wanting to help, she was just like everyone else. He was beyond angry at her, but he still had no desire to repeat the sensations involved in having his head about to explode. So, he took her advice. When the flood came, he simply rode it out. The images and emotions came just as quickly as the first time, but he did not try to pin any particular one down. Without interference from him, the information flowing through his mind resolved itself into confusing but recognizable patterns. Bits and pieces caught his attention as they flowed by, and he found that the highlights sunk in without it being necessary for him to use any additional focus.

There was sorrow and a sense of helplessness as a young woman in a hospital bed faded from this life mixed with a bizarre sense of satisfaction that he had been in time to see that she did not enter the journey with no one to hold her hand as she went. There was determination and a sense of purpose as he watched a man in the sparseness of a prison visiting room struggle to fit pieces of paper together with fascination that something functional could come from such unlikely materials. There was an overriding sense of loss and frustration as one more piece of the never completed puzzle slipped from his fingers as he was forced to continue the never ending running. The hurt washed over him as he relived choosing his freedom over the knowledge of his family. Each moment faded into the next with no clear dividing line between them. It was odd, but it was not painful. At least, it was not yet.

He felt Elle move away from him as the images stopped. He stood with his eyes closed waiting for the dizziness and pain, but they did not come. She had been right. Of course, it only made sense that she had been right. She should have been, after all, this was all her doing. He reflected for a moment on the fact that she had told him the truth, and he even considered the possibility that she had not intended to cause his original experience with her (what had she called it?) 'triggered memories.' He still could not fathom how it was she had succeeded in hotwiring his brain (which was a disturbing concept any way you looked at it), but she might, in fact, have not been ill intentioned.

She might even have had some valid (well, one that made sense to her anyway) reason for not wanting him to hear any more of what Sydney had been saying. He would be the first to admit that he still had no idea what was going on here, and there might be any number of facets that he had not yet recognized. Was he giving her the benefit of the doubt? It was amazing what having your head not explode could do for your point of view.

Then, he opened his eyes and any budding softening in his distrust of her ultimate purpose dissipated far more quickly than it had taken to appear. There was no mistaking his current location. He was back in the Centre. He did not know exactly where, but he would recognize the feeling of being shut in one of its sublevels under any circumstances. He fought the feeling of claustrophobia that was creeping up on him and forced himself to think. They (or she because maybe he had been horribly wrong in the beginning to think that she was being manipulated behind the scenes) had found him, drugged him or otherwise incapacitated him, and brought him back to his own personal nightmare.

The why of the whole bizarre manner of doing so no longer mattered. Knowing their rationale for this new aspect of the game they played would not help him at the moment. Besides, why did they ever do any of the things that they did? They did it because they were the Centre. They did it because they could. They did it because they were sure that no one would ever stop them from doing it. It did not matter why they did it. The only thing that mattered now was finding his way out.

The corridor was empty except for Elle who had moved a few doors down from where he stood. She was waiting quietly as he processed this new development. He was disappointed but mostly in himself. He had started to let himself think that there might be something beyond the obvious occurring in this new invasion of his life. He should have known better. He had known better. He had promised himself that he was not going to get caught up in hoping for things anymore. He obviously needed a whole lot of practice in that regard. This evening might even serve as a good reminder the next time he felt himself slipping.

Elle was clearly unperturbed by the whole situation. She seemed unconcerned by the fact that he was not following her. She would have had to have known that she would need help by this point. Nobody could possibly believe that he was just going to come quietly. He scanned the hallway in both directions. No sweepers were visible, but their addition to the equation was only a matter of time. They would be waiting for a signal. They might all be waiting to see his reaction. They might be looking for just one last way to toy with him before they tossed him back into a cell, but any moment he was not restrained was a moment he could take a chance on slipping past their contingency plans. He took off toward a turn in the hallway only to stop short and back pedal as Raines and Lyle appeared from around the corner. He needed a plan. He needed to think. He needed . . .

Apparently he needed nothing, as the two men continued to walk along engrossed in a conversation that had nothing to do with Jarod's presence mere feet from them. They studiously ignored him as they passed. This was just too much. This was past the usual game playing, and it needed to stop. There was no possible way that the two of them had not noticed that he was standing there. It would not have been possible. They had to have seen him. Why did they have to insist on trying to mess with his mind? Recapturing him was obviously not enough. They wanted to mock him as well. As they passed his blond headed tormentor without the slightest indication that they noticed her standing there, Jarod came to a decision. There was no reason for him to play along any more. He was not going to do anything that they expected him to do. He was not going to be a rat running around in their maze. He was not going to give them the satisfaction. He was going to turn this game on its ear.

"Lyle!" He called out as he moved to catch up with two of the main features of his night terrors. He found himself thinking that it was rather ironic. Here he was chasing after the two of them, while they pretended that he had no effect on their existence. He felt a harsh laugh rising up in his throat and fought it down. This was no time to become overwrought. He needed to be clear headed for this. They simply continued to talk as Jarod came closer. How long did they think they could pretend? He made out something Lyle said about "suppose the boy returned with you" but he was not really paying attention. "Lyle, I know you are stupid, but I was unaware that you had recently become deaf. It must be difficult to implement sign language when you are missing an appendage."

He fully expected Lyle (who had never before failed to respond when taunted) to spin around and bring the charade to its conclusion, but nothing of the sort happened. His words fell short of their target. They were more devoted to the game than he had expected. The two men simply kept walking without so much as a beat of a pause in what they were saying to each other.

"I'm talking to you," Jarod began but no more words came as he stared in shock at his own hand. The hand that he had attempted to place on Lyle's shoulder. The hand that he had watched go through Lyle as if he were mist. This was not possible.

"Does the word intangible ring any bells?" She had not moved from her spot by the wall, but Elle's expression had once again shifted to one of slight amusement. Jarod was not finding anything he was seeing to be amusing. To be perfectly honest, he was sick of dealing with her and all the attendant confusion of her behavior.

He looked from his hand to Elle, and hurled the words at her as if they were daggers. "What did you do?" If he asked the question often enough, maybe she would get sick of hearing it and answer him. It probably was not going to happen, but it was not like he had many options remaining in his arsenal.

She shook her head in disappointment before she spoke. She was back to that long suffering parent tone again. "We've been through that, Jarod. You know what we are doing. I don't enjoy repeating myself, and I'm not going to do it just because you seem to be suffering from a slow learning curve today. Start paying attention. I think you should go in there." She indicated the doorway she stood across the hall from with the inclination of her head. It was a normal Centre sublevel door for a room where a 'subject' would be kept. It had the standard keypad lock on the door.

"I don't care." He challenged. What was it going to take to get some straightforward answers out of this woman? She had to know that he would not just keep cooperating indefinitely.

"You keep saying that, but we both know that you don't really mean it. I suggest you stop wasting our time and look inside." She matched his challenging tone and folded her arms across her chest. She settled back into a relaxed, waiting stance in contrast to his tense, impatient one. If he never saw that expectant expression on her face again, it would still be too soon. He briefly considered attempting to stare her down, but he was already fairly certain that he would lose.

Jarod grudgingly moved to the door and stared blankly down at the keypad in front of him. He looked up at her and smirked. She thought she wanted to play? Well, she was about to have to answer at least one of his questions. It was even better if she would have to volunteer information without him actually having to ask for it. Did that make his behavior petty? Yes, but he was all out of his niceness quotient for dealing with deranged, human hunting, home invaders. "I'm afraid I can't. I'm all out of access codes today."

Elle smiled at him. That was not exactly the reaction he had been looking to receive. "The sarcasm is starting to grow on me, Jarod. When you use it, at least I know you are feeling something. An access code won't be necessary for you. The door shouldn't be any trouble. You're intangible, remember? Walk through it."

She could not possibly be serious, but she was. She was standing there waiting for him to knock himself out attempting to walk through a solid wall. The little voice in the back of his head whispered about his hand passing through Lyle's shoulder, but he shook off that thought. He did not want to think about it. He had already decided that that had been some sort of hallucination on his part. It had to have been. It was not possible that it had actually occurred.

"Would you go already? Do you always waste this much time over analyzing? You need to go for a little less thinking and a little more doing here." There was that impatience in her voice again. What was her issue with time wasting? She certainly kept harping on it. He looked from her back to the door in front of him and back at her again. She was not budging.

She really expected him to do this. She wanted him to walk through a wall (or door or whatever, as if it really made a difference which one it was). He was not sure if that made her crazier or him crazier since he was about to actually follow her instructions. He did not have a whole lot of options here. He braced himself for the laws of physics to reassert themselves to the detriment of his hand as he slowly pushed it into the door. He met no resistance. This was too weird. He closed his eyes as if that would somehow make it better and took the step into the room beyond.

He opened his eyes to find that he had come safely through, and he quickly took in his surroundings. He had been right. It had been the door to a standard 'subject' room. He knew who Lyle's 'the boy' must be now. It was the boy - Gemini. He was curled up on the poor excuse for a bed that the meager room afforded, but it was not the sparseness of the furnishings that was causing Jarod agitation. It was the condition of the child or teenager rather Jarod realized as he looked. Gemini looked awful. He was shirtless in a room that Jarod could tell was far too cold, and his back was decorated with so many bruises that Jarod found it hard to find an unshaded patch of skin. He had been beaten on several occasions if the color variations could be trusted as an indication of various degrees of healing. There were some cuts scattered across his back and arms as well with a few still seeping blood. The boy's knees were drawn up to his chest, and his forehead was resting lightly against them. The side of his face that was visible to Jarod was dark along the jaw line.

The boy was rocking himself back and forth and making an atrocious whimpering noise. It sounded for all the world like an injured animal and was all the worse because of the muffled, choking sound that indicated the boy was desperately trying to keep himself from making too much noise. It was not enough, Jarod knew from experience, for them to inflict pain on you. They wanted you to believe that you were not human enough to have your pain acknowledged. They wanted you to demonstrate no emotion except for acquiescence. If you displayed other emotions, it meant that there were pieces of you that were beyond their ability to control. He understood what their thinking was in regards to emotional expression. He didn't understand what their motivation was for causing such outright injury to the boy. What could they possibly have hoped to gain from treating the teenager like this?

The boy coughed, and his hands jumped to clutch at his sides in a manner that told Jarod there was something very wrong with his ribs. Although, how there could not be something wrong with his ribs given the state of the rest of him would have been a more legitimate thought to ponder. His head had come up, and Jarod moved so that he could see the boy's face. He wished he had not done it. Perspiration was beading up on the teen's face despite the chill of the room, one eye was blackened, and blood was dripping from his lip where he had bitten through it in his effort to keep himself from crying out.

Jarod nearly ran back into the hallway as a wave of nausea hit him. What had they done to that child? He was going to be sick. He buried his own head in his hands and began to chant. "It is not real. It is not real. It is not really happening. It is not really him. He is safe. He is out. He is with Dad. He is fine. They do not have him anymore. He got away. They cannot hurt him any more."

"Problem, Jarod?" For the first time, the only word that could be used to describe Elle's voice was cold - it was showering with ice water in December cold. It lacked all the earlier sounds of sympathy and companionableness.

"That isn't real!" He insisted.

"Are you trying to convince me or to convince yourself? I thought you didn't care, Jarod. I thought you were all finished being concerned with other people's problems. I thought you were all set to ignore them. I thought you were just going to go curl up in your own little cave and not let anything touch you ever again. Isn't that what you said?" Her voice had switched from cold to disdainful (which really was not any better to have directed at him).

"I am! I will! As soon as you leave me alone!" He wasn't even really coherent as to what he was saying. He needed to get out of here. His walls were crumbling.

"Is that really what you want, Jarod? Do you want to be able to look at what you just saw and not have it make you sick to your stomach? Do you want to be able to walk past suffering and never give it a second thought? Do you?" Her voice had shifted once again. It was accusing, and Jarod found himself angry at the injustice of it. Who did she think she was pretending to know what it was like to live like he did day after day. She knew nothing, but she had brought him here and forced him to see while telling him that he could not intervene. Then, she had the audacity to lecture him about the importance of caring?

There was a time that Jarod could recall quite clearly when he had not believed in violence. There was a time he could remember when the thought of raising his hand to a woman would not have had a chance of processing through his brain, but he wanted to hit her. He wanted to lash out. He wanted the taunting to stop. He wanted the game to stop. He wanted to be able to channel all of his frustration into something, and at this moment that something was her. He wanted her to have to feel pain that was even just a fraction of what this forcing him out of his self-protective shell was doing to him. Did she think he had come to where he was lightly? Did she think he hadn't had his reasons for deciding to walk away? His fists were clenched so tightly that he half expected to see blood being drawn by his fingernails in his palms.

"What are you thinking?" Her tone had returned to what Jarod had logged in his brain as 'normal' for her. There was nothing normal about the way she was using it. It was casual conversational again as though the coldness of the past few minutes had never occurred. If he was not so angry at her, he would have reopened the question of just how mentally unstable she might be.

"You can't tell?" The words were ground out more than spoken. His fingernails dug ever so slightly deeper into the flesh of the palms of his hands.

"Fair enough." She took in his tense appearance for a moment before questioning him. "Would hitting me really make you feel any better?"

It would not. He knew it would not, and he hated that he knew it. All it would do would be to make him feel guilty. Guilt was definitely an emotion that he did not need to explore more fully. He had had more than his fair share for several lifetimes. He needed to get himself under control. He made a concerted effort to slow down his breathing, and he felt his hands begin to loosen at his sides. He looked down at them – there were deep indentions but no blood.

Elle's voice had returned to its gentle almost pitying tone. He hated that tone. It was condescending. He did not need pity from her. "I know seeing that was painful, Jarod."

He cut her off before she could go any further. She knew nothing, and he was not going to let her pretend any longer that she understood him. "You don't know anything about it."

"Don't I? Do you really think you are the only one who has ever seen someone they cared about broken and been unable to save them? Don't flatter yourself." She had snapped her answer at him, but Jarod heard some other emotion mixed into the cadence of the words. It was pain, maybe?

"What do you want from me?" His voice sounded so resigned and so tired. This had to stop. Please, please, could this not just be all over? All he needed was a simple answer from her. He would do whatever it took to be allowed to go back to working toward peaceful oblivion. Something in him balked at the word allowed, and he felt a flicker of anger spark through the muddle of his emotions.

"It's more what I want for you, Jarod." A simple answer was, apparently, not possible. How hard was it to not answer a question with a question? He felt that spark of irritation increase.

He glared at her. She remained nonpulsed. She stood there for a long moment watching him with her head tilted to the side in that peculiar mannerism she had. She nodded her head slowly as though she had come to some sort of a decision, and she held her hand out toward him.

"What are you doing?" He regarded her outstretched hand with suspicion. What was she up to now?

"I am ceding a measure of control of the situation. I am offering you a chance to actively make some decisions. I am letting you make the choice that you are ready to move on to the next place. You feel confused. You don't understand what is happening because you don't want to believe what I am telling you." She raised her hand in a 'don't interrupt' gesture. "Believing is too a choice, Jarod, don't try to tell me differently because I know better."

He swallowed the words he had been about to speak and looked at her with more confusion than suspicion.

"You live your life feeling as if there is someone else always out to control you. As far as you are concerned, I am just one more in a long line of people who want to make you do things that you don't want to do. I'm just one more round in an already too long game of chase. You are tired of running, tired of feeling forced to run, and petrified of what will happen if you stop. I am honestly not here to purposelessly cause you pain. I can let you have this much control. I will let you do the deciding of when we move. It's really quite generous of me, Jarod. I'm a girl who dearly likes to be in charge. For you, I'm willing to give that up."

He must be losing his mind because Jarod found himself believing her. There was something in her eyes that spoke clearly of someone who knew what it felt like to have others always pulling on the strings of your life. She knew, somehow, what it was like to be chased and to be hunted. He knew, somehow, that she was not here to do either to him. He felt the irritation and anger give way to an acceptance of the knowledge that there was far more going on here than he could explain.

"You think you are the only one who has ever had to run. You think that you are the only one who has ever been special enough to attract unwanted attention. You think that no one else could possibly understand what you live with because no one else could ever have possibly had to live through something even remotely similar. You may be special, Jarod, but you aren't that special. You aren't the only one who has ever been chased. You aren't the only one who has ever had to constantly look over your shoulder. There are other people who understand. I understand. I know what it is like to feel like absolutely everything is outside of your control. I am giving you a chance to take some of that control back."

Jarod knew that she was offering him something far deeper than the ability to make a simple decision. She was granting him dignity and an acknowledgment that he was every bit as deserving of that dignity as she was. She was telling him that she knew he was not a tool or a piece of property or a means to an end. She was telling him that she knew he was real.

He was seeing into a world that he could not touch. It made no sense, but it was what it was. She had been correct earlier in the evening when she had said that it did not matter whether he believed or not. He was living it anyway. He nodded in response to her offer and took a step in her direction.

She smiled at him. "Decided to believe me?" She asked holding her hands behind her back as if she were giving him the opportunity to change his mind.

"Believe, not trust." He told her.

She nodded in agreement. "I'm smart enough to know the difference. Besides, I am a big believer in trust being earned. I don't expect us to be there yet."

Her voice dropped to a mellower tone. "Are you sure you want to leave him?" She turned her gaze in the direction of the boy's door. Jarod looked almost longingly at it for a moment before shaking his head in the negative direction.

"You said there is nothing I can do."

"True." She sounded sad as she pronounced the word. Her eyes were still focused on the door instead of on him.

"Then, why would I put myself through that? I see enough people that I can't save every day of my life."

"Okay." She turned away from the door and refocused her gaze on the man standing in front of her.

"That simple?" He asked.

"That simple." She replied. "I told you it was your decision."

Jarod reached out and took her hand.


	5. Chapter 5

The images were all angry this time, and their rage was directed at him. A man in a hazard suit shouted at him as he stood on an observation deck looking down at him as though he were an exhibit in a zoo. A woman sank back into the seat of a car with her words dying on her lips as she was forced into stillness through his manipulation. A drugged woman in the desert pleaded with him to understand her rationalization for what she had done, but he had already deemed her excuses unworthy. They fell on deaf ears. Their various words all blended together into a shouted mass of phrases accusing him of causing their deaths. He had been heartless and arrogant, and he had been the instrument of their destruction. They were not inclined to be forgiving.

He had killed them, and they had come to proclaim his guilt. Who was he to judge they demanded? What made him worthy to decide who should be given a second chance, and who should be punished. He was every bit the murderer he had accused them of being. He was just as guilty as they had been, and the air pulsed with their outrage that he had yet escaped the torment that should be his fate. He decided who lived or died, and they would hold him responsible for his decisions. He was trapped, they would never let him go, and they would ensure that his suffering was every bit as severe as their own had been. That was, after all, only just, was it not?

Only, he had not killed them.

That thought managed to push its way through the jumble as his brain cleared of the images that had haunted him. He had not killed them. He had scared them. He had tortured them with the thought that they would meet the same fate as their own victims, but he hadn't killed them. They hadn't known that at the time though, and his memories of their emotions were tainted by their belief that they would in fact die.

"What did you do, Jarod?"

"Huh?" He looked up to find Elle staring at him with an expression of horror on her face.

"No wonder you are losing it." She sounded disbelieving and a little scared. "I hadn't realized you were that bad."

"Excuse me?" Jarod didn't know whether to be confused or affronted. He knew that term 'losing it.' People used it to talk about people who were exhibiting symptoms of mental illness. What would make her say that? He hadn't said anything out loud, had he? Unless he wasn't the only one experiencing those flashes in his head? Her next words confirmed his suspicions.

"If that's what you have going on in your head all the time, it's a wonder you haven't had a meltdown long before now." Her voice had changed again to a disapproving tone, but Jarod was far too busy getting angry to pay any attention or to care what she was thinking for that matter.

"You saw that?" He demanded.

"Seriously, Jarod, what kind of messed up guilt trip are you having?"

"You were inside my head? You saw what I saw?" Jarod was yelling at her now. He was too busy being outraged at the invasion to think about how she could have managed to do it. It didn't make any less sense than anything else that had been happening to him. "I want to know how you did that!"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! You were inside my head! Don't you have any idea how wrong that is? I thought you understood. I thought you knew what it was like."

Elle actually looked startled. "Is yelling at me your way of pretending that you don't have to deal with that problem you just encountered in your head?"

Jarod just glared at her breathing heavily as he attempted to calm down so he could think straight. "My only problem is you and whatever it is you are doing to me."

"I already told you what we are doing, Jarod."

"You want me to see something. Fine. Why don't you just tell me what it is, so I can go home?"

"Home? Did you seriously just refer to that hovel you were staying in as home? Cause let me tell you, Jarod, that would be a bigger indication of mental instability than any of the others you've displayed tonight." He waited still seething and refusing to let her bait him. Seeing that he had no intention of responding, she rolled her eyes and questioned him. "Do you know where we are?"

"I thought it was fairly obvious that we are in a cemetery. The marble monuments weren't enough of a clue for you?"

"Back to the sarcasm, are we?" She replied before making a make yourself at home gesture with her hands. "Let's see if we can be a little more specific. Go ahead, figure out why we are in this particular cemetery."

When Jarod didn't move, she continued. "For someone who says that he wants to finish this so he can leave, you aren't moving very quickly." She smirked at him. He really, really hated that smirk.

With a sigh, Jarod turned to survey the nearby graves. It wasn't hard to find what he supposed he was looking for as Elle had planted them directly in front of a headstone inscribed with the name 'Catherine Parker.' "Is that what I'm supposed to learn here? She died anyway. It's been duly noted."

"Pay attention, Jarod, what else does it say?" Clearly, Elle wasn't going to be affected by any alteration of his mood.

In his exasperated state, it took three read throughs before the difference in the inscription clicked in his brain. It said 1980. The date of death was listed as 1980, but she was still dead. "So?"

"Look, I know this is rough on you, Jarod, so I'm going to cut you some slack here. Start putting things together. Earlier tonight you were blaming yourself for her death, but you are seeing what would have been different. If she hadn't stayed at the Centre to save you, this is how things would have ended. Her dying was not your fault. Are you ready to hear that?" Her voice sounded resigned as though she were asking the question already knowing that his answer was not going to be to her liking. Jarod, however, was not in a frame of mind to care what answer she would have liked to hear.

He focused on the number inscribed on the headstone. "She got longer with her daughter."

"So, you aren't ready to hear that?"

Jarod sighed and turned to face Elle with tired eyes. "Please. I believed you when you said you thought you were helping, but you aren't. I know you want me to care or think that I made a difference or something, but I can't go back to the way I was living before. I just can't do it. I don't have it in me anymore."

"Did I say I thought you should go back to the way you were living before? Constantly running hoping that your life is going to start somewhere down the line isn't any better than trying to shut everything out and hide from the world. You need some sort of balance, Jarod. You've got to find some middle ground."

"There is no middle ground."

"I'm hoping you figure out that you are wrong about that."

"I want to go."

"Beg pardon?"

"You've got me trapped in this trip of yours, but you said I got to decide when we moved. I want to move. I want to get through all the things you are going to show me and get out. Are we close to done? Are we half way? Give me some perspective here."

"I don't know." She replied.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Exactly what I said, Jarod. I don't know what all there is to see."

"That doesn't make any sense." Jarod told her with a look of out and out disbelief (and not a little annoyance) etched across his facial features.

"It makes perfect sense to me." She stated shrugging her shoulders as if she could not be bothered by his inability to comprehend things that should be obvious.

"Fine, let's just move on now." He could not deal with her. She was beyond his dealing capabilities. She made no sense, had no apparent motivation, and spouted off random gibberish. It was not worth the trouble. He just needed to keep her going so they could get to whatever done was.

"I think you should start putting the pieces together." She said in a voice that was more suggestion than command.

"You said it was my decision." He reminded her.

"It is." She reached out and took his hand.


	6. Chapter 6

Sadness was not even the proper word to describe the intensity of the emotion which hit Jarod as the images began. Loss, hopelessness, or a deep sense of futility might have come closer to describing it, but none of them seemed to go quite far enough. The intensity of the feelings only increased and became more undefinable as the people associated with them made their appearance. A woman stared at the empty locker in a fire station where her friend would never again stow her gear. Jarod could not return her friend to her. The woman would always mourn her loss. A blind woman cradled a camera whose lens would never again be focused by her hands. Jarod could not return her sight. She would never again have her art. A reprieved father joined his daughter on the outside of a prison's gates. Jarod could not turn back the clock and return to them their stolen time. There would always be the reality of years they had missed.

Had he really helped any of them? He had brought them some measure of closure. He had granted them some sort of justice, but granting them justice did not change what things were. It could not bring back the things or the people or the time that had been lost. There were some things that could not be fixed. Some things could not be saved. Some people could not be saved. Some things would always be wrong. He could not change that. He could not make it better. He would always fail. He had always failed.

Images closer to his heart joined the stream running through his brain. He had not been able to save them either. They were only more pieces of evidence of his eternal failure to save even those he claimed to care for most. Kyle lay dying in his arms. There was no saving him. There was nothing he could do. Why could he not think of something? He was the one who was supposed to find the solutions. Kyle was his little brother. He should have protected him. He should have always kept him safe. He had not managed. What had happened instead? That bullet had been intended for him. He should have been the one bleeding on the ground. His little brother's life had been traded for his own. Why? So he could go back out into the world and fail to repair more unrepairably broken lives? So he could let more people he claimed to care about down?

Thomas's grave was immaculately tended. She always saw to that. He had killed him as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself. It was all his doing. He had manipulated them. He had pulled the strings so well that the Centre should have been proud of their teaching abilities. He had learned his lessons from the best, and he had learned them well. He was no different from them in thinking that he could control other people's lives. What had he been thinking? Had he really believed that they could simply walk away? He had known better than anyone that no one was ever allowed to walk away, but he had pushed them together anyway. Thomas had not stood a chance. A good man was dead, and she had one more grave to spend her life tending. He had done that to her. It had been his arrogance and his determination to meddle.

Please, he did not want to think about her. Anything but her. Miraculously, the images stopped there.

"What are you doing to yourself, Jarod?"

He didn't even bother looking up to meet her eyes. She was standing too closely to him. He could feel that she was still clutching his hand in her own. "You're the one doing this to me."

"No, I am not. You are doing that to you. The anger, the sadness, the sense of loss - those are all you hanging on and focusing on the negative that you have encountered in your life. You are deliberately blocking out all of the positive. You are keeping yourself from remembering that no one else will ever be injured by that insurance scam because you put a stop to it, that that woman is out happily living her life instead of huddling in fear inside a rehabilitation center because you helped her overcome that fear, or that that father and daughter get to spend the rest of their lives with each other on time that you reclaimed for them. Do you think that this is what your brother wanted when he stepped in front of you? Do you think he intended you to spend the rest of your life guilt ridden? Shutting yourself down, refusing to actually live your life, is that how you intend to repay his sacrifice? Do you think he regrets that little boy having a second chance to live his own life? For every negative situation you have been in, you have made something positive come out of it. Why are you insisting on shutting that out? Why are you pretending that none of it exists? Why won't you let yourself have credit for that? "

They stood together in the hallway in silence. Elle was staring at him with a weird combination of expectance and hope waiting to see if any of her words would get through to him. His head hung down and his shoulders slumped in a defeated posture as he contemplated the hand that was still holding on to his. Jarod finally looked up with eyes that were glossy and pain filled. "Because it isn't enough." He told her insistently. "It's never enough."

Suddenly he was sucked back into one of the flashing images, but this one was different. It was nothing that he recognized. It might have been a school hallway. Jarod was not sure. The only thing he was sure of was that this memory was not his own. Logic would dictate that it had to be hers. He was certain that if he looked into a mirror, he would see blond hair surrounding Elle's face. It was disconcerting. The sensation of becoming someone else should be familiar. This should feel exactly like the slipping into someone else that he did in order to complete a pretend, but this was different somehow.

It was difficult to keep his own thoughts separate from the other emotions that he was feeling - her emotions. Scattered students milled about a hallway and staircase, but the memory seemed to be focused on one in particular. There was a teenage boy with dark hair scribbling furiously across the open page of the notebook resting on his lap. The boy looked up at him, no at her, and smiled. The smile lit up his face and he was looking at Jarod, no not at him he told himself, he was looking at her as if she were the most precious thing that he had ever seen. There was no sound for some reason, but he watched as the boy's mouth formed the word 'Isabelle' as he scrambled to his feet. The notebook slid to the floor unheeded. The boy was clearly awkward, and Jarod found it adorable. No, she found it adorable. He felt safe and treasured and adored, and he liked the feeling. He was terrified of the fact that he liked the feeling. Why? Why was he so scared? He should not like those feelings. He should not want to be around that boy. He could not want to be around that boy. Something bad would happen. What? He couldn't get close. He couldn't let someone see him. He had to push him away.

The memory broke, and he looked up to find Isabelle jerking her hand out of his own. She was backing away from him down the hallway in which they were standing. She was breathing heavily as if she had just come up from spending too long underneath the water. Her eyes were wide open like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. She looked petrified, and Jarod found himself finding some sort of disturbed satisfaction that she was finally getting to feel what she had been putting him through all night long.

"How did you do that?" She had backed herself all the way into the wall and was holding her hands up in front of herself as if to keep him away. She still looked absolutely terrified, but it was starting to be replaced by a look of confused agitation. "You should not have been able to see that. I blocked the connection. I made it one way only." She took a deep breath and repeated, "You should not have seen that. What did you do?"

How was he supposed to answer that question? He had not done anything. He was not the one in charge of all the strangeness. That was her department. He was just along for the ride (unwillingly along for that matter). He found himself getting annoyed by her agitation. How did she think he had felt all night? "I didn't do anything. You are the one in control here, remember?"

She did not answer him. She was probably ignoring him at the moment. She was shaking her head frantically as if denial would make the past few moments disappear. He mentally wished her good luck with that approach. It sure hadn't helped him get out of this situation.

"Isabelle . . ." His use of what he assumed must be her real name seemed to snap her back into her regular demeanor. She was calm and composed again so quickly that Jarod stopped in midsentence to watch the transformation.

It was just as well since she was apparently determined to interrupt that particular sentence. "Did I tell you that you could call me that?" She demanded.

"Did I tell you that you could call me Jarod?" He retorted. They stared each other down for a moment before he continued. "Who was that boy?"

"We are not going to talk about him. We are here for you, Jarod. We need to keep going. We're wasting time again." The terrified girl of a few minutes before had vanished completely. The only indication that anything had happened at all was a slight edge to Isabelle's voice.

"You are very concerned about this whole time issue. What is it that you think is going to happen?"

"Let's just get going."

"I don't think so. I want to know how this is all happening."

"I can't explain that to you, Jarod. It would take more time than we have, and it would come under the heading of personal information that I'm not going to go around handing out."

"Then, I guess we are stuck standing in this hallway until whatever mysterious time limit you have been so concerned about runs out on us." He challenged attempting to mimic her earlier expectant stance (he suspected that he wasn't quite pulling it off, but it was worth a try). This had gone on for long enough (okay, he had thought that from the beginning, but he was really sick of unanswered questions that led to more unanswered questions).

"I think you would regret that decision."

"I didn't want to come here in the first place. It's fine by me to not see anything else."

"Why do you always have to make things so difficult?"

"Why are you incapable of answering simple questions?"

"I can't tell you everything you want to know, Jarod."

"Because you won't." He insisted.

"No, because I can't." She countered. "I can't tell you about everything that you might see here because I don't know what any of it is going to be. I see it when you see it. I don't know it ahead of time. If it seems like I do, that's because I'm paying attention to what is going on while you are off in that la la land that you go to every time we make a place jump."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"That's asked and answered, Jarod. I'm here to help you. Would you let me get back to that?"

"This is not helping me."

"How would you know? You aren't at the end yet."

"Why did you decide to come after, I mean 'help' me?"

"Cute. Not funny, but cute."

"Don't."

"Why not? Because it reminds you of her? What am I supposed to call her by the way? Miss Parker? That's not what you call her in your head."

"Reminding me about that particular invasion of privacy is not making me any more inclined to do what you ask. And don't talk about her."

"See, Jarod, we all have our off limits subjects. Remember that." She actually sounded triumphant as if she had just proven some important point.

"What I remember is that at the beginning of this whole mess you said 'when you first noticed me' as if you had been watching me." He was going to get some answers whether she wanted to give them to him or not. "I want to know why."

"You were listening. I was starting to have my doubts." She sighed. "I have been watching you for awhile." She took in his expression and pointed her finger accusingly. "Don't look at me like that, Jarod. I wasn't watching you in some creepy 'we are the Centre, and we shall control all' kind of a way. You watched people when you were working a pretend. This wasn't any different so just climb down off that high horse you were about to mount." She returned her hand to her side as she continued. "You aren't the only one who does a lot of moving around. We have crossed cities on multiple occasions. For someone who insists that he is on the run, you let your picture get taken an awful lot. If you're really going to hide, you might want to try to tone down the publicity. That's why I noticed you. I have an eidetic memory. I kept seeing the same picture, the same first name, the same story theme of unexpected help, with different cities, a different occupation, and a different last name - I put two and two together and got five." She held up a hand. "It's a figure of speech, Jarod, don't ask. Use the context clues and figure it out yourself. You were obviously running from something. We thought . . . I thought that, well, it doesn't matter what I thought. I did some checking up on you."

She held up her hand again to stave off his interruption. "No. I will not tell you how I did the checking. It isn't something that the Centre can ever use against you, so you don't need to know about it." She returned to her original conversation path. "You helped people. I liked that. You were doing good despite the bad that had been done to you. Then, things started to change. You seemed to be getting lost. I thought you could use some perspective. I still think that this can help you. When this night is over, I will not be bothering you ever again. You won't get a repeat experience. I don't tread the same ground twice. It's too risky, no matter how much I may like the person I believe you really are. So, if I were you, I would make the most of this opportunity while I had it. Do you really want to stand here and stare at the walls? You and I both know that you are curious."

"Where are we going?" She was right. He was curious, and he didn't want to stand here and stare at the walls. He didn't like it, but it was true.

"Through that door." He looked at where she was pointing and turned to her in consternation.

"You can't just take us directly to where we need to go?" He complained. "You have to make me walk through things? It's very uncomfortable." She lifted an eyebrow and looked at him with that trace of amusement. "Mentally uncomfortable." He muttered.

Isabelle rolled her eyes at his complaints before answering him. "Actually I could, but I want you to be paying attention before you get to the things that you need to pay attention to. After your first little episode, I haven't really been sure what kind of state you'll be in after we move."

"That was a simple answer to a simple question." Jarod stated in mock awe. "I think we are making progress."

"Just get moving."

The space that he entered looked very much like any slightly upscale apartment with nice furnishings. The only extraordinary thing about it was that there was nothing extraordinary about it. The whole place was all very factory spec model feeling. There were no personal touches, no pictures, and nothing to indicate that the space was actually lived in except for the lap top computer being used by a teenage girl sitting at the dining room table. She was typing at breakneck speed and seemed to be engrossed in her work.

Jarod caught Isabelle's smirk as he started to edge around to see what it was that the girl was doing and stopped himself. He might be a little bit curious about what was going on in this alternate universe that he had been dropped into, but there was no need for him to flaunt that curiosity in front of Isabelle. She was already hard enough to deal with. He didn't need to give her any more ammunition.

He focused instead on the girl at the table. He could study her without moving from his spot. The girl had lighter brown hair, blue eyes, and was fairly nondescript looking. Jarod didn't recognize her although something about her eyes felt familiar to him.

"I don't know her." Isabelle looked at him blankly, so he explained. "I've known everyone else. Shouldn't I know her?"

Isabelle shrugged. "Not in charge, remember?"

"That was incredibly helpful."

"Ah, the sarcasm is making a come back."

Their bantering was interrupted by the door swinging open and banging shut behind them. The girl at the table continued typing as though she hadn't heard, but Jarod felt his stomach lurch when he saw the man who had so unceremoniously entered. It was Lyle. He was smiling, and Jarod knew from experience that no good could come from a smiling Lyle.

The man didn't appear to be surprised that the girl had not acknowledged him. He pulled out a chair directly across the circular table from her, and turned it around. He sat down in it backwards and rested his chin on the back while he stared at the girl. She continued typing. He reached forward and began to drum his fingers on the table (fingers, Jarod noted, that were attached to hands that both had their thumbs). After a moment, he began to thump the legs of the chair onto the floor in a rhythm with the drumming of his fingers. What was he, Jarod found himself thinking, five? When the girl still didn't pay any attention to him, he finally spoke.

"Polite people greet their visitors." Jarod had begun to think that the girl truly was oblivious to Lyle's presence, but her return remark proved that theory to be incorrect.

"Polite people knock on doors." It was delivered in a calm, measured tone with no indication of annoyance. She didn't even look up or miss a beat in her typing. Jarod mentally applauded. He was a big fan of anyone who knew how to take Lyle down a peg or two.

"True, but I've never really been one for the civilities."

"I guess it runs in the family."

Jarod did a double take. Family? What family? The thought of Lyle producing children was making his stomach queasy. Lyle had returned to his finger drumming and started to hum under his breath. Was he really that juvenile? The girl had stopped her typing and moved her hand to the mouse. She was exaggerating her movements and sending the message that she was choosing to acknowledge Lyle only because she was finished with her project.

"All done already?" Lyle asked her with his eyes lighting up like a dog that had spotted a rabbit. "I thought that you told Corporate it would take you at least three days to sort out their little accounting problem. Here it is a scant eight hours later and you are all done. It couldn't be that my little sis is developing a deceitful streak, could it? Someone should correct you before it becomes ingrained. Dishonesty is such a nasty habit."

"You would know. I guess lying must run in the family as well."

Lyle laughed out loud. Jarod was too busy trying to process the 'little sis' comment to pay him much attention. How? The headstone had said 1980. The girl was clearly in her middle teens. It could fit. What about Ethan? Was there an Ethan in this world? He looked more closely at the girl. He had thought there was something familiar about the girl's eyes. They were Parker's eyes. The two didn't really look anything alike other than that feature. That lack of further resemblance must have been what threw him. He refocused on the conversation in front of him. They might give him some needed information.

"I'm tired, and I'm going to bed in exactly five minutes. You are more than welcome to stay here and stare at the furniture if that will make you happy. Unless, of course, you would like to tell me why you are actually here?"

Lyle pouted and mimed clutching at his chest. "I'm hurt, Therese. It is Christmas Eve. That's supposed to be a time for family, isn't it? I just wanted to come by and bring you some Christmas cheer. We wouldn't want you to be left here all alone. Why are you all alone, sis? Did Daddy forget to come by and take his little princess out to dinner? I would offer to take you myself, but we both know how daddy dearest feels about you venturing out into the big, bad world without him by your side. Don't worry. I'm sure he didn't just forget you. I'm sure there must have been something very important that kept him away."

The girl, Therese Jarod supposed, slipped around the table and hopped up to sit in front of Lyle. Jarod couldn't really be supportive of her decision to move closer to the man (with Lyle distance was always the best choice), but she seemed to be confident in her actions. "Like I care how that man who calls himself our father is spending his evening. Projecting your own feelings of abandonment much? Are we done here, or are you seriously going to stay and stare at the furniture?"

Lyle looked at her with an expression that made Jarod incredibly uncomfortable. It made him uncomfortable every time he was unfortunate enough to see it. It was the same look that Lyle got sometimes when he was looking at Parker. There was nothing overtly wrong with the look, but something about the combination of that look and the knowledge that it was being directed at the man's sister made your skin crawl (the fact that it was being directed at a girl who was less than half Lyle's age didn't help any on this occasion either).

"Aren't you just as pretty as a picture when you get annoyed?" Lyle reached a hand up as if he were going to touch Therese's face, but she expertly slipped out of his reach, descended from her table top perch, and began to walk away from him.

"Goodnight." She said with finality over her shoulder. She had only gotten a couple of yards away when her forward motion ended. Her eyes glazed over, and her head tilted as if she were trying to focus on something that she was hearing from a far distance away. She held that pose for a few moments before turning back to face Lyle. Her expression had softened, and she was smiling at him. Make that two features that she shared with Parker. That smile dredged up childhood memories of the few and far between times when a little girl had let down her guard enough to allow that smile to be seen. Jarod could have done without the ache those particular memories caused in him. Therese was walking towards Lyle, and Jarod couldn't decide which one of them confused him more. What was she doing? And why was the expression on Lyle's face half terrified and half fascinated?

"Why didn't you just tell me that was why you came?" She asked as she reached him. She reached down and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. Lyle's voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.

"Don't."

She ignored the request and placed a hand on either side of his face. With as much gentleness as one would use with a small child, she tilted his head back so that he met her eyes.

"Mama loves you, Bobby. She wants you to remember that." Therese leaned over and placed a soft kiss on his forehead before moving back to look into his eyes again. The siblings stayed frozen in the moment while Jarod watched. It was Lyle, and it was disturbing, but there was something undeniably (and did Jarod ever want to deny) beautiful about the interaction he was witnessing.

Lyle blinked, and the moment broke. The fascinated, hopeful expression that had changed his face into one that Jarod wasn't sure he recognized dissipated so quickly it was hard to believe it had ever been there. It was replaced with one of anger. Lyle jumped up shoving the chair so that it crashed out of his way and onto the floor. He grabbed Therese by the wrists and slammed her backwards pinning her against the table.

"You don't call me that!" He screamed at her. "I've told you never to call me that! He does not exist! Our mother is dead, and you do not hear her! You don't touch me. Are we clear?" He started to shake her when she didn't respond, and Jarod desperately tried to think of something he could do if Lyle got really violent. "Are we clear? If you ever call me that again, I will BEAT THE INCLINATION OUT OF YOUR HEAD! Are we clear?"

Therese just calmly stared at him. He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and pushed her away from him with enough force that Jarod was amazed that she managed to keep her balance. The two of them stood there with their eyes locked in an upside down, dark reflection of their interaction of a few minutes before. Therese was the one that broke the silence.

"You and I both know who you really are. You and I both know he is in there. Someday, he is going to be the one who wins." She smiled a far off, dreamy smile. "Oh, what this place is going to look like on that day."

Jarod thought he was going to have a heart attack. Was she insane? Didn't she know better than to goad Lyle like that? Didn't she know what kind of a psychotic personality she was dealing with here? It was all well and good if you were on an even footing or if you were capable of fighting back, but she was just a kid. She was half his size. Lyle could snap her neck without a second thought. What was he going to do if Lyle went after her?

Therese turned around and restarted her trek toward what Jarod assumed was the bedroom area of the apartment. She was turning her back on an angry Lyle? She really was insane. She didn't get very far before she was stopped by the sound of Lyle's voice.

"Therese?"

His voice wasn't angry or mocking or in any way any of the things that Jarod had ever considered to be Lyleish. It was uncertain sounding and quavering. Therese stopped in her tracks, and Jarod noted that her shoulders had tensed. She turned around very slowly and looked at the man in front of her with a questioning, semi-hopeful expression.

"I think you should know that Raines brought him back today." Lyle began to talk faster in the voice that didn't belong to Lyle as if he were desperate to get the words out as quickly as possible. "He's not in good shape. He should be . . . he just shouldn't be alone right now. They changed the passcode, but I'm thinking you probably already have some way around that."

Therese was staring at her brother with a look that couldn't seem to make up its mind whether it was ecstatic or concerned. Her eyes shifted from him to the door and then back again as if she were wishing that she could be in two places at once.

"Go," he commanded when she remained still.

At that word, she moved so quickly that Jarod was reminded of a wind up toy being dropped to the floor. She closed the gap between the two and threw her arms around Lyle's neck while making a muffled choking sound that could have been either a laugh or a sob. Then, she was gone out the door into the hall with the words "Mama's not the only one who loves you, Bobby" lingering in the air left behind her.

Lyle had frozen in the position in which he had been standing when she hugged him. The only change was an increasing tension throughout his whole frame. If Therese had been a wind up toy, Lyle was a spring that had been coiled too tightly. The hands hanging at his sides worked themselves into fists as his whole body began to shake. With a final shudder, the tension broke as Lyle launched himself at the wall. He began to pound his fists into it over and over again as he talked to himself.

"You're weak. You're weak. The weak get used and destroyed by the strong. Is that what you want? Is that what you want!" Variations of the phrases were repeated over and over while he continued to pummel the wall. When he stopped, his knuckles were bleeding. He stared at the blood trickling across the backs of his fingers for a moment before raising one hand to his mouth and licking. It was Jarod's turn to shudder. After tasting the blood, a smile spread across Lyle's features. It was the smile that Jarod associated with him in his nightmares. "Things that make you weak are liabilities. Liabilities must be eliminated."


	7. Chapter 7

Jarod was (for lack of a better term from Isabelle's perspective) definitely freaking out.

"What is he going to do to her? What is he going to do?" He was staring wild eyed at the retreating figure of Lyle who had ended his little session of self inflicted harm by heading down the hallway with his usual measured stride.

"You need to calm down." Isabelle's soothing tone of voice obviously didn't help him any as he turned on her and began to back her across the hallway. He looked utterly desperate.

"Calm down? Don't tell me to calm down! You have no idea what that man," he practically choked on the word as he pointed at the back of Lyle's head as he stood waiting for the elevator to arrive, "is capable of doing to someone. Tell me what he is planning!"

"I don't know." Isabelle insisted, but her voice was missing the usual trace of annoyance that had been accompanying the words.

"I am so sick of hearing you say that." Jarod spat. "You're the one who brought me here! How can you not know? No more games!" Jarod attempted to slam his fist into the wall (mostly because it seemed like a good release for some of his feelings at the moment), but instead of the satisfaction of taking his frustration out on something solid and tangible, what he got was an over balancing that sent him to his knees. His fist had, of course, not actually made contact with the wall.

"You're welcome." Isabelle stated looking appraisingly from the wall to his hand. Jarod was too distraught to ponder the implications of that statement. She shook her head and muttered "boys" in a tone that implied the eye roll that didn't come.

"Tell me what I have to do to be able to help." Jarod insisted. "There has to be some way that you can make that happen." Isabelle started to shake her head in denial, so he continued. "You don't understand. I have to stop him."

"You are here to watch, Jarod." She reminded. "These are not the people whom you can effect. These are not the people whose lives you can change. You can't intervene. You can only observe and learn. You've been telling me all night that you aren't going to care anymore. Why are you so upset? You want to tell me what it was the set you off?" Jarod's head sunk into his hands as he maintained his position kneeling on the floor.

"Please, she's going to need help."

"It's not going to come from you."

"It never does. I never help. I never save her. I never do what needs to be done."

"What are you talking about, Jarod?" Isabelle was sounding concerned again, but that give away of her emotional state was lost on Jarod at the moment.

Jarod didn't answer her. He probably didn't even register the question. He was too caught up in a series of memories swirling through his head. If sadness and anger and futility had been the themes of previous groups of memories, the theme of these must be failure.

A kind eyed woman was brushing the hair back from his forehead while she whispered how proud she was that her daughter would have such a good friend. He watched himself promise her that he would always be there for her little girl. His stomach clenched in guilt. He hadn't kept that promise. He had never been able to keep that promise. He had failed. He always failed.

He was being held back while a dark haired little girl screaming for her mother was dragged away by sweepers. He couldn't get to her. He couldn't help her. Someone was stopping him, and he couldn't fight hard enough to keep his promise.

The slightly older girl was crying as she was being slapped across the face by Raines while Jarod's own arms were pinned to his sides. He still couldn't get to her. He still couldn't help her. He wasn't strong enough. He had failed her again, and he might never have another chance to make it right.

A teenage girl with the first girl's eyes was being shaken by an irate Lyle while Jarod stood idly by doing nothing. Isabelle's injunction that he was merely an observer was ringing in his ears. He couldn't help her either. He was going to fail again. He failed her even by proxy.

A dark haired woman with sad blue eyes stood in a cemetery in the pouring rain while Jarod watched her from a distance. He still couldn't help her. He had never been able to help her. His promises were worthless. There was always something or someone that got in the way. Even now, in this glimpse of a world that could have been different, he couldn't save anyone. Isabelle wouldn't let him. He was going to be forced to fail at something he hadn't wanted to get involved in to begin with; it wasn't fair.

"I hate you." The words were intended to come across as harsh and accusing, but they somehow fell flat and lifeless.

"Jarod." He felt her move closer to him, and he looked up to see her hand hovering as though she wanted to place it on his shoulder but wasn't sure if he would accept the gesture. She was right to be cautious. He wasn't in an overly accepting kind of a mood.

"I hate you. I hate this night. I hate these things that I'm seeing. I hate that I can't do anything about any of it. Mostly, I hate that I care enough to hate it." He stopped to suck in a breath before he continued. "You win. Are you happy now? We've established that I'm not capable of cutting my losses and walking away. Please, I still don't understand. For all I know, I really have gone crazy or maybe I'm still passed out drunk at my kitchen table having a very vivid hallucination (he thought he saw the ghost of a smile cross Isabelle's face at his comment, but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure). I just know that I'm involved now. I need to see what happens here. I can't just leave her again."

"You aren't crazy, Jarod. I'm sorry."

"Sorry? It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"I wanted you to snap out of your malaise. I wanted you to remember that we care for a reason. I wanted you to understand that there are things that happen that you can't control, and it doesn't serve any purpose for you to insist on feeling guilty for them. Wanting those things doesn't mean that I don't see that this is hurting you in the process. I'm sorry for that. Hurting you is not the goal here. I just want it to be worth it in the end."

"That's less than comforting."

"You are the only one who can make it worth it. It's up to you what you do with it."

Jarod felt an ill-humored chuckle rising up in his throat. Yes, his track record at long term life decisions was so stellar. Whatever it was that she was plotting for should work out just swimmingly.

"Do you want to tell me what it was you were rambling on about not saving someone?"

"No." He answered. Isabelle sighed and looked at him with a concerned expression.

"She may be a little girl trapped in the Centre, but she's not your little girl trapped in the Centre. You're still with me enough to recognize the difference, right?" She asked him.

"I know who she is and who she isn't." Jarod snapped with such venom that Isabelle looked positive that she had hit a nerve. He took a deep breath, and his voice mellowed a few degrees. "Please, can we just follow her?"

"You know you aren't going to be able to do anything except watch?" She reminded him again.

"I know." He said in exasperation. "I don't like it, but I know."

"Are you going to be okay with that?" She was pushing.

"Do I look like I'm okay with that?" He retorted.

"Jarod, I'm serious. If you are just going to shut down on me, there isn't any reason for you to be here."

"That's an interesting change of attitude that you are having. You couldn't have had this epiphany before you invaded my life?"

"I'm not changing my attitude. This has always been about opening your eyes and helping you to understand. If you are going to only dwell on the bad things that you are seeing instead of taking in the whole picture, then you are never going to understand. If we follow her, and you don't like what you see are you going to quit? Or are you going to see this through to the end and pay attention to all of it?" She wasn't backing down.

"Fine." Jarod acquiesced. "I'll cooperate, and I'll go wherever you want. I won't dig my heels in and refuse to move again. I'll keep going until we get to whatever end it is that you will consider the end. Is that what you want to hear?" He paused. "Please, I want to follow her."

"What is it that you are afraid is going to happen?" She asked him.

"It's Lyle!" Jarod shouted as if the name were an explanation and answer in and of itself.

"Therese doesn't seem to be afraid of him. Maybe you don't understand the situation as well as you think you do. Besides, didn't you lock your friend in a shipping container with him once?"

Jarod pointedly ignored her question. "If you try to tell me that I'm here to learn that there is something worth saving in everyone, Lyle included, we may as well be finished now."

"I just want to make sure that you are still paying attention - to everything, not just the things that you want to see."

"Please." He said again. Isabelle leveled a long appraising look at him.

"We can follow her." She agreed.

They caught up with Therese far more quickly than Jarod had expected (given that Isabelle insisted that they take the 'long' way to get to her). It was almost funny how quickly jumping from one place to another had become 'normal' and riding elevators and walking down hallways had become unusual. He had been adamant about hurrying. He had a very bad feeling that something atrocious was about to happen. They were dealing with Lyle after all, but Isabelle had insisted.

It would have taken up more time than Jarod was willing to give to argue the point with her. He suspected she was trying to get him to calm down completely, but that was not going to happen in any circumstance that involved Lyle. Isabelle led him straight to the same sublevel hallway that they had been in earlier - the one that housed the boy's room.

"You do know where you are going." He accused.

"No, Jarod, I just pay attention."

He had to admit that she had a point. He could have pieced the overheard conversations together in the same way if he had bothered to do it. He had been too busy flipping out to do much constructive thinking. There was a reason he didn't indulge in panic very often.

There was no sign of Lyle which helped Jarod's blood pressure somewhat, but he still was carrying a huge sense of foreboding. Therese had halted just outside of the boy's door, and she had every appearance of someone who was carrying on a conversation with herself. Jarod, having been around Ethan, recognized what was happening. He just wondered who it was that was talking to her. It seemed from the phrases that Therese was muttering that someone didn't want her to go into that room.

"He needs me." She was practically pleading. "Even Bobby said he needs me. I can't just leave him alone." She paused with that far off listening attitude she had displayed earlier. She obviously didn't like what she was hearing because her hands were clenching at her sides.

"I don't care!" Her voice returned loud and clear, and Jarod panned the area to see if it had attracted any unwanted attention. The hallway, however, remained clear despite the increasing volume of Therese's voice as she argued with whoever was in her head.

"I don't care what they want. I don't care what they do. He's my friend, and I'm not going to abandon him!" The argument appeared to reach a fever pitch as Therese's hands went up instinctively to cover her ears as though she were going to drown out the sound. It was disconcerting to watch only one side of the heated discussion. What exactly was being said to her? They or it (what reference word should he use, it surely wasn't Catherine trying to dissuade her from trying to help her friend) didn't want her going into that room. Why?

"I'll deal with it." Therese's voice had turned insistent. Of course, the boy's room would be monitored. Maybe she was going to get caught by Raines?

"I know that! I'm not stupid." Maybe it was Catherine, and she was trying to warn her that something was going to happen to them? Therese ended the conversation abruptly with a shouted "No!" followed by a softer "you can't stop me."

Jarod's sense of foreboding increased as he watched her shake off her agitation and coax a resounding click from the locking mechanism on the door. There was something wrong, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. She stepped into the room, and Jarod followed her as she closed it behind her. He felt the wave of nausea wash over him as he again took in the boy's appearance, but he bit it down.

The boy hadn't noticed her entrance. He was still huddled on the bed making that heart wrenching, half swallowed keening noise. Jarod looked at Therese. Her eyes had misted over, but she quickly wiped them dry with the backs of her hands and moved towards the figure on the bed. Her voice was soft and almost caressing as she paused in front of him.

"Oh baby, I'm so sorry." She received no acknowledgment of her words and reached out to place a light hand on his head. The boy jerked back as if he had been burned with a gasp of pain as the movement wrenched his ribs. He kept his head ducked down as if he were afraid to make eye contact with anyone. Jarod knew the type of 'encouragement' used to instill that response, and he found himself biting back another wave of nausea.

"Nobody's baby." The boy's stilted voice broke out suddenly with a sob attached. "I'm nobody's baby." He repeated. Therese knelt in front of the bed but was experienced enough to know not to try to touch him again.

"Jay . . ." She started, but the boy practically shouted to cut her off before she could continue.

"No!" He gasped out. "There is no Jay. There is only Project Gemini." The words started to come faster as though flood water was spilling over the top of a levy. His voice was quiet as if breathing deeply enough to make the words louder was not possible, but they were filled with a venom that made them sound more hissed than spoken. "Not real. He's not real. I'm not real. No I. Backup copy. In case original is damaged. Not real. Only to be used. No name. No feeling. Not real. Work. Do as told. Not real. No choices. No name. No name. No name. Backup. Do. Not. Erase. Not real!"

The boy resettled into the whimpering noise (having never lifted his head to look at her), and Therese stared at him for a moment as if she were deciding what words she should say. Jarod found himself thinking that there was no punishment large enough to compensate for the damage that Raines had inflicted on the world. How did you even begin to try to unravel the kind of damage that had been done here? He had struggled to find a way to break the ice with his own Gemini, and he hadn't been anywhere close to as damaged as this boy clearly was. Therese started simply.

"I know your name. You do have one. It's J.J. I call you Jay for short because I'm your best friend, and I'm allowed." She paused to see if he would react, but he only continued with the muffled keening noise. She kept talking.

"You are no one's back up copy. You are you. I know because I know you. I know all about you. I know that you tuck your pencil behind your ear when you stop to think when you are making notes on a project. I know that you lost your first tooth when you fell doing a sim when you were five. I know that you sleep with your back against the wall because it makes you feel safer. You always double knot your shoelaces. You start running your fingers through your hair when you get tired, and it gets all ruffled looking. You recite prime numbers when you need to get your brain to shut off so that you can sleep. When you get free time, you build model planes. Your favorite color is blue, but you won't tell me why. I don't badger you about it because everyone deserves to have some things that are private. You deserve to have some things that are private."

The boy quieted but still didn't look up. Therese paused for a moment taking in the fact that she was getting through to him and (Jarod suspected) trying to pick the next set of appropriate words. He didn't know how she knew what to say, but it seemed to be working.

"Those things are all you. They're the real you. The one that Dr. Raines wants you to forget." The boy had stiffened when she pronounced the name, but he was still listening to her. She noticed the response and pushed ahead.

"He doesn't want you to be you, Jay. If he gets you to give up who you are, then he wins. We can't let him win. You can't let him win. I need you to be you. I need my best friend. I need you to shake it off and come back to me. You need to fight him, Jay. Please." She paused again for a moment, but there was no change in J.J.'s demeanor. She switched conversational tracks.

"We're going to go away from here someday. You and I are going to leave. We're going to get away from him, but we can't do that if you give up. We can't do that if you don't push him out of your head. You can't let him get to you." Jarod felt a moment of concern when he heard what she was saying, but then he realized that her back was to the surveillance camera and that she was speaking too softly to be picked up by the audio feed (whether it was accident or design, whoever was monitoring the room would not be able to tell what she was saying).

"You can play along when you're with him. You can say whatever you need to say to keep him from hurting you, but you can't let him get in here." She reached up and touched the boy's (J.J.'s, Jarod corrected his thoughts) head. He stiffened again but didn't pull away this time.

"I don't know what all he said to you. I'm sorry that he hurt you. I'm here now. It's all going to be okay, but I need you to fight. Can you do that for me? Please, Jay, I know you are in there. Push past all the stuff that he wants you to believe. That's what isn't real. You and I are real, and I need you back here with me. Please?"

His hands had dropped down to his sides, and Therese reached out and took one in each of her own. He didn't react to her touch at all this time. His head was still buried, but Therese looked up at him waiting for him to make a move. She was still for a few moments, then she continued to talk to him in a reassuring tone.

"I was so worried about you. I've been looking and looking, but there wasn't anything about where they had taken you in any of the computer records. I guess that means that they are on to me. We figured that was about to happen, remember? I'm just going to have to get sneakier. I don't want to go through that again. It's been the longest three weeks of my life. I even went checking down on SL27. As much money as we rake in for this place, you would think that they would be able to afford to repair a little fire damage." She paused as if waiting for the standard response to some inside joke. Some of the tension seemed to be draining out of the teenager's body, but he was still unresponsive.

She took a deep breath and continued with a catch in her voice. "I was scared. I was scared that I lost you. I can't lose you. Jay, baby, look at me, please?"

J.J. slowly raised his head and looked down at her with dull, lifeless eyes. Jarod watched as he focused on her face and something like hope flickered across the back of his gaze. After a few moments the boy blinked, and his eyes lit up in recognition. His voice was still raspy from the earlier abuse, but he sounded infinitely better than he had the last time Jarod had heard him speak.

"Tessa?" He questioned.

"That's right." She replied in a tone that was somewhere between relieved and joyous.

"It's cold in here." He stated somewhat petulantly. She chuckled as she picked herself up off the floor.

"It's good to have you back."

Jarod watched as the two positioned themselves on the bed in a familiar manner that spoke volumes about the number of times they must have found themselves in similar situations. They were so practiced that they settled in without saying a word.

Jarod wasn't sure whether that was more comforting or disquieting. How often had they had to deal with the aftermath of one of Raines' episodes? Therese sat on the bed with her back against the wall, and J.J. adjusted himself until he found (what Jarod could only assume was) a relatively non painful position with his head resting in her lap. When he was settled and covered with the paltry excuse for a blanket that had adorned the bed, the two finally spoke again.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I know." She reassured him. J.J. sighed as Therese threaded through his hair with her fingers.

"I don't want to go to sleep."

"You need to rest." She said somewhat admonishingly.

"Later. Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Tell me what we'll do when we get out. Tell me about all the places we're going to see." He requested sounding for all the world like a little boy asking for an oft repeated, favorite bed time story.

As Therese began to talk, Jarod found himself feeling deeply uncomfortable. Now that he knew that J.J. was being taken care of, he felt rather voyeuristic. He felt like he was observing something deeply private. He shouldn't be listening to their plans for a future; that was between the two of them. That thought reminded him of the camera.

"Who's watching them? How long do they have before a sweeper comes to drag her out of here?" Jarod demanded.

"I don't know, and I don't know." Isabelle held up her hands in a defensive gesture before Jarod could reply. "I'm only repeating myself because it doesn't seem to have sunken in the first eight times that I've told you."

"Can you take me to find out?"

"That I can do." She offered him her hand.


	8. Chapter 8

Jarod's first thought was to wonder why they had traveled to a new place instantaneously with no image flashes. His second thought was to wonder why he was watching Mr. Parker fill out paperwork at the desk in his office. The man didn't seem to be doing anything pertinent to any of the things that he wanted to know about, so Jarod decided to tackle his first question first.

"No side trip down memory lane?" He directed at Isabelle with just a touch of sarcasm in his inflection. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him as if she couldn't tell whether or not he was serious.

"Because that worked out so well last time?" She was worried. That was an interesting new development.

"What are we doing here?" He questioned. She gave him an exasperated shrug of the shoulders.

"Just pay attention."

"He doesn't seem to be watching anybody." Jarod pointed out to her. As if in response to his comment, a hesitant knock sounded from the direction of the door.

"Enter." Mr. Parker called still reviewing the papers scattered across his desk. He didn't seem to be concerned by the disruption. Jarod wondered if he had been expecting someone. An incredibly uncomfortable looking tech took a scant two steps into the room before hesitantly beginning.

"I'm very sorry to bother you, sir." The man paused and waited for an acknowledgment, but any response Mr. Parker would have offered was postponed by another addition to the room. A livid looking Raines pushed his way past the tech and further into the room (no wonder the tech looked uncomfortable) nearly knocking into the man with his oxygen tank.

"You had asked," the man continued taking a few probably unintentional steps away from Raines, "that you be informed of any security irregularities at the location we discussed on SL16." Jarod found himself feeling sorry for that poor man. It was looking like he was about to be trapped in the middle of a disagreement between two of the Centre's power players.

"Quite right," Mr. Parker commented looking up at the man while ignoring Raines' presence. "I'm pleased to see that you understood the importance of that discussion. What seems to be the difficulty?"

"The difficulty," Raines interrupted determined to force himself on the other man's notice, "is that there has been a security breach. There is an intruder that would already have been dealt with if I hadn't been told that all authorization for actions on that sublevel must come from this office. You can imagine my confusion when I was informed that security decisions regarding one of my own projects were no longer within my own jurisdiction." The man looked at Mr. Parker expectantly, but he continued to speak to the aide.

"Pull up the security feed on my desktop, will you?" It may have been phrased as a question, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was an order. "Then, you can be on your way. I'll handle everything from here." The tech looked infinitely relieved and scrambled to the desk to type the necessary commands. He scurried (actually scurried) from the room as soon as Mr. Parker nodded his confirmation that the task had been completed to his satisfaction (Raines tended to have that effect on people).

Mr. Parker stared at the image of the two teenagers on his monitor, and Jarod looked over the man's shoulder. They still held the same position. Therese was saying something, but the audio feed had been turned to mute. Mr. Parker seemed contented to look at them in silence with a strangely satisfied look upon his face. Raines looked anything but satisfied, and it was clear that his patience with the chairman's lack of expected reaction had run out.

"Why are you waiting? She should be removed immediately. She is corrupting my research. Send someone to collect her." The man's voice hardened through the wheezing. "Then, you can explain to me the curious amount of corporate oversight that has suddenly appeared in my projects." Mr. Parker turned to look at the man in front of him with something bordering on disgust.

"Corrupting your research?" His voice was almost disbelieving. Mr. Parker settled himself back into his desk chair and regarded Raines with cold eyes. "I was unaware that you were producing any useful research. You've been far too busy pretending to be a god to accomplish anything remotely approaching productive." Raines looked momentarily stunned by the attack (Jarod was momentarily stunned by the attack).

"I came here for answers - not to listen to you pontificate." Raines replied recovering his composure quickly.

"That was your answer, Dr. Raines." He responded. The sarcasm in the stress of that one word was palatable. Mr. Parker appeared to be enjoying the other man's growing discomfort.

"I demand that all security procedures for my projects be immediately returned to my control." Raines began to threaten. "I don't know what you think you are playing at, but when the Triumvirate hears about . . ." He was abruptly cut off by Mr. Parker's interjection.

"You pathetic fool of a man. The Triumvirate will say nothing about it because the orders came directly from them. You need to grasp the tenuousness of your position here, Raines. An appeal to the Triumvirate will only lead to an even less enviable position for you than the one you already enjoy. As difficult of a concept as this may be for you to grasp, you are in no position to be demanding anything from anyone. The Triumvirate is sick of your incompetence."

"I am a valued member of this organization. The Triumvirate understands that." Raines immediately countered. "My work has . . ." He was once again cut off in the middle of a sentence.

"Your work, as you call it, has nothing to do with being a contributing member of this organization. It never has. You have always done what you do out of your own self-serving need to pretend that you have some pittance of control over the universe. As I said previously, you like to play god. Your 'work' has been tolerated on the chance that you might in the course of your endless self-serving produce something useful." Mr. Parker lectured. "You forget far too easily that we are a business. Businesses are required to turn a profit. That is something in which your plethora of projects is sorely lacking."

"Project Gemini is poised to be the most profitable venture that the Centre has ever had."

"Don't make me laugh, man." Mr. Parker chortled. "Do you have any idea how many years that boy will have to work in order to merely recover the money that was poured into the colossal failure that was Donoterase? You couldn't have built a more inefficient waste of resources if you had set out to try."

Every time that Raines tried to force himself into the conversation, Mr. Parker merely spoke a little louder. It was almost like watching a tennis match where Raines never got the chance to complete a serve. It was a disconcerting conversation for Jarod to watch. He had never before thought about the inherent inconsistency of a man like Raines being allowed to do what he did in a place that was concerned with a bottom line profit margin. Raines' 'experiments' were notoriously unsuccessful. He had always assumed that Raines went on unchecked because nobody cared enough to intervene, but this Mr. Parker was correct. The people that cared about the expenses should have stepped in on at least some occasions. Why had they not?

"Have you forgotten that fully half of the original Project Prodigy subjects were placed under your control?" Mr. Parker seemed to be warming to the subject as he continued. Somehow without ever raising his voice he managed to convey the impression that Raines was receiving a long overdue dressing down. "With all of that potential at your fingertips, you still only managed to produce one potentially useful subject. The least you could have done was make Lyle stable. Don't think I have forgotten how you came to be in control of Lyle either. My memory is very clear on that point."

"Your personal opinions are unimportant." Raines attempted. It seemed a feeble response to the accusations of life long failure that Mr. Parker appeared determined to deliver.

"Perhaps, but the Triumvirate's are not." The man continued. Jarod felt that the man was enjoying himself far too much for this to be a simple case of the endless power plays that were always going on between Centre employees. There was something both unpleasant and deeply personal between the two men. Was Raines responsible for Catherine's death in this world as well? Did Mr. Parker actually care? Why was he thinking instead of listening?

"They are tired of your constant waste of resources. Their memory is equally clear on many points. We are forced to waste manpower watching Lyle, so that he can be cleaned up after when he has his 'episodes.' Is he a perfectly wonderful midlevel manager? Yes, but we could have gotten that off of the streets. We spend endless amounts of money cleaning up his messes so that we can keep him around in case he does, in fact, become useful to us at some point in time. That's not a very impressive resume that you have built up there." Mr. Parker stopped for a moment as he watched Raines squirm.

"Project Prodigy was expensive. We poured more money into that project than you would be capable of earning in a lifetime, and we only ended up with eight subjects. Only one of those subjects was female. You were explicitly told that the situation with Catherine was too volatile to continue. Did you listen? No. You, once again, pursued your own agenda and attempted to implement Project Mirage. When she ran, her defection was laid at your door. The loss of her daughter even more so. Have you forgotten what the ultimate goal is? You single handedly set the second generation of the Pretender Project back more than two decades. You were only granted a measure of clemency at the time because your ineptness inadvertently led to Jarod's continued passivity and cooperation. That time of clemency has come to an end. There are new rules now. I have been granted oversight of all of your endeavors. You will follow orders, and you will do so without complaint or question. Your inefficiency has come to an end." Mr. Parker seemed to run out of steam, and Raines (recovering from his momentary speechlessness) took the opportunity to finally interject his own commentary on the situation.

"Why allow the two of them to spend time together?" He gestured at the security feed playing on the desktop monitor. "They will only distract one another. That is highly inefficient." Mr. Parker looked at the screen that still pictured the two teens before he replied to Raines.

"The two of them are the future of Project Prodigy. They will bring it into its second generation. A little time lost now will be more than repaid in future dividends."

Jarod got a sinking feeling in his stomach as Mr. Parker spoke. His sense of foreboding had returned full force, and he was afraid that he knew what turn the conversation was taking. He didn't want his mind to head down the path that it was heading, but Mr. Parker's next words confirmed it.

"As I reminded you, Project Prodigy was enormously expensive with only limited results. That is about to be rectified." The man turned to look directly at Raines. "Use your head! They are teenagers, they are lonely, they are afraid, and they depend on each other. We want them to spend as much unsupervised time together as humanly possible without making them suspicious. Why lay out all that investment capital when we can let nature do the work for us?"

Jarod had hoped he was wrong. He had so hoped he was wrong. Was there anything that they wouldn't stoop to doing? He was afraid that he knew the answer to that particular question a little too well.

It had been Catherine who was talking to Therese in the hallway. She knew what they were planning and was trying to warn Therese away. But Therese wasn't going to stay away, it was already too late. Jarod had seen them together. They were too invested in each other to make a break. He even knew why J.J.'s favorite color was blue. The Centre had the two of them exactly where it wanted them to be. They only had to bide their time. The sound of Raines' wheezing voice threw Jarod out of his thoughts.

"You're resurrecting Project Eden. I seem to recall a time when you were not such a proponent of its inception." The man's tone held a hint of challenge as if he were gearing up to fight back.

"Things change." Mr. Parker replied simply. Raines' voice gained a goading quality.

"You were removed from the need to know basis as well as the chain of command on that particular project at one point in time because of concerns about your 'family loyalties.' I wonder what could have made the Triumvirate change its mind. Perhaps they will change it back."

"They have no questions about my loyalties." Mr. Parker didn't look like he was going to be goadable.

"Not as fond of this daughter?" Raines sneered at him. Mr. Parker actually laughed.

"Do you think that I'm an imbecile? Do you think I didn't know about your incessant meddling? I know that that girl is not my daughter." He pointed a finger in the direction of the monitor as he continued.

"I have always known that she is not my daughter. Sakes alive, man, even she knows that she is not my daughter. This project will move forward. You will remain here for one reason and one reason only. We need a villain in this piece. You are here because they are afraid of you. We want them to be afraid of you. You will continue to work with the boy as you always have. Use whatever means that you would normally employ. Continue to change his security measures. She will continue to break them, and you will not interfere with their ability to spend time with each other. Be their boogie man. You're actually good at that. Someday they are going to want help to get away from you, and the Centre will provide that salvation. They will be beholden to us. They will be grateful to us, and you will actually have accomplished something useful in your tenure here. Are we clear?"

Raines looked for a moment as if he were going to explode. Then, he smiled. It made him look even more disturbing than he usually did.

"Villain of the piece? Boogie man, am I? Then, I suppose I must go out and be the best villain that I can be. We wouldn't want to let the Triumvirate down, now would we?" He turned to make his way out of the door, and Mr. Parker made no move to stop him. Jarod followed him a ways down the hallway where he stopped to speak with Gar.

"I have a special project that will need your attention. It must be taken care of immediately. Let's go."

Jarod began to follow them when he realized that Isabelle was no where to be seen. She hadn't followed him. He backtracked to Mr. Parker's office. Mr. Parker had returned to his paperwork. Isabelle was staring at the display that showed Therese watching a now sleeping J.J.

"What are you doing?" He asked her.

"It isn't all bad, you know?" She replied in a far off sounding tone of voice.

"What are you talking about?" He demanded. "You aren't making any sense."

"You are only focusing on the bad things that you are seeing. You are missing out on the fact that there are glimmers of hope here." She insisted still locked into that far off quality.

"Are you insane?" He wasn't sure whether his voice sounded more disbelieving or disturbed. "They are planning on using those two children as breeding stock! It's sick."

"Yes, it is." Isabelle agreed with him but her voice still held that strange sound. "Look at them. They are each others' bright spots. They are each others' hope in this place. They have that going for them."

"No, they don't." Jarod argued with her. "The Centre will just rip it away from them or turn it against them somehow. That's what they do. That's what they always do."

"Are we still talking about the two of them?" She asked turning to look at him. "Or are we talking about you now?" Isabelle waited a bit while Jarod stared at her in confusion before she turned back to the monitor and continued to look at Therese.

"Look at how she's looking at him. It's like he's something infinitely precious." She whirled back around to Jarod with an angry lilt to her voice.

"Someone used to look at me like that, so don't tell me that there is nothing good in this situation." She took a deep breath and continued in a calmer tone. "Is it fair that they are here? No, it's not, but they can't change that. All they can do is work with what they have, and what they have is each other."

"That's what the Centre wants." Jarod tried to reason with her while attempting to process the information about herself that she had let slip. "It's using that against them."

"Not if they turn it around on the Centre." Isabelle insisted. "Think of what they could accomplish working together. You need the people that you care about close to you, Jarod."

"Are you still talking about them?" It was Jarod's turn to pose that question. Isabelle sighed.

"Did you hear what you wanted to hear this time?" She asked calmly. Jarod was startled by her abrupt change of subject, but he answered her question on reflex.

"She got away," he said before he even realized that the words were headed out of his mouth. "Her mother took her and ran." He let just a hint of his happiness about what he had overheard in the two men's conversation creep into his voice. Isabelle didn't look happy about his revelation. She shook her head at him as she spoke in a chastising tone.

"Did it occur to you to wonder, genius," she asked, "how it is that if your friend and her mother got away, that Therese is still here?"

If he had been startled before, now he was downright shocked. He hadn't thought about that. He hadn't thought about a lot of things. He had been so busy being excited over hearing the words combined with being worried over the plans the Centre had for J.J. and Therese that he hadn't bothered to process anything else. The sinking feeling was back in his stomach, and he wondered vaguely if this was the way that ulcers got their start.

"What happened to her?" He held up his hands before Isabelle could answer. "I know, I know, you don't know. Can you just take me to her?"

"I'm not going to do that."

"I thought you said I was in charge."

"Of when we move. Not of where." She countered.

"I want to . . ."

"I know what you want, Jarod. But I don't know where she is, and you promised me that you would see this through. I don't know where I would be taking you. I don't know what you will see. If you don't like what you see, I don't know if you're going to be able to keep from shutting down on me. She gets to you in a way that other people don't. I don't know if you are ready to handle it if things aren't as happy as you want them to be. I think you need to check on the other people that you care about first."

Jarod was floored. All he wanted to do was to check on . . . wait, Ethan. They had been talking about Project Mirage.

"Do you know where Ethan is?" He asked her.

"No, but I can take you to him." She replied.

"What?" It was slightly more adult like than the "huh?" that had originally crossed his mind.

"I don't have to know where he is to get you there. I can just take you to wherever he is." She stated matter of factly.

"I don't understand." Jarod responded.

"Do you really need to understand? Do you actually understand any of this?" She asked holding her arms out in a sweeping gesture.

"But, that . . ." He started to argue.

"Look, Jarod, do you want to stand here arguing with me about answers to questions that A) you don't even need to know, B) will make absolutely no difference nor have any effect on what you are seeing, and C) that I'm not going to give you any way, or do you actually want to go investigate some questions to which you can find the answers?" She looked at him speculatively. "It's your call, but if you honestly think you are going to wear me down into telling you something that I don't want to tell you, you're wrong."

Jarod looked at her for a moment in a combination of annoyance and bemusement. Every time he decided that she wasn't really there to torture him, she had to go and say something like that.

"Fine. Can we go find Ethan now?"

"Let's go."


	9. Chapter 9

Walking in on Ethan was like walking into some B-grade movie set in a 1970's insane asylum. He was straight jacketed but still struggling with the two sweepers who were attempting to force him into yet another bleak Centre room. A third sweeper was seated stunned beside the door holding his hands up to a nose that was gushing blood. A fourth, Gar, stood well back from any potential injury and watched the process with a detached expression.

Ethan's eyes were empty, devoid of any traces of the brother that Jarod knew. He looked like an animal fighting desperately to avoid being returned to his cage. There was no spark of recognition, no understanding or processing in those eyes. Ethan wasn't there, and whatever was there was fighting the sweepers on pure instinct.

Jarod's attention was distracted by a middle aged man in a lab coat that came rushing down the corridor with a syringe in hand. He stopped a few feet away from the chaos and began to bark at Gar.

"What were you people thinking? You know he isn't to be moved without sedation. It's in his standing orders." Gar simply looked bored with the scene as he replied.

"It's not my fault that you people can't tell time. The requisition was sent. He was needed in a lab for a special project. We took him. We aren't the ones with difficulty processing orders."

"You know good and well that the request wasn't called in in time for anyone to get here." The man attempted to argue.

"Do you want to discuss that with Dr. Raines?" Gar looked at the man in amusement before continuing. "I didn't think you would."

The medic turned his back on Gar with a huff and began looking for an opportunity to get closer to Ethan. He didn't look too pleased at having to move closer, but who would have been? It took a few minutes, one black eye for Ethan, and a cursing sweeper with his arm held at an unnatural angle before such an opportunity presented itself.

They dropped the unconscious Ethan unceremoniously to the floor, and Gar shooed the medic on his way as the sweepers took out some of their anger on Ethan's rib cage.

Jarod turned away from watching one particularly vicious kick from the sweeper with the broken arm and caught the medic still peering into the room. He was shaking his head, and he marched back into the room with a determined look.

"That's enough!" The sweepers froze at the sound of his voice but looked unconcerned when they saw whom it was doing the yelling. "Which one of you wants to be the one to explain to Dr. Raines why he has lost one of his subjects?"

The sweepers exchanged slightly nervous glances before looking to Gar for further instructions. He motioned to the uninjured sweeper, and the two of them none too gently lifted Ethan onto the standard issue Centre cot that was the room's only furnishing. The sweepers trooped out, and the medic made a cursory check of Ethan's vital signs. The man sighed as he looked down on him and muttered.

"What did you ever do to earn that man's ire, kid? It's not enough to be out of your mind. He's got to make the sweepers have it in for you as well."

The medic exited, and Jarod noted that two new sweepers were now posted outside of the door. He hovered near Ethan's unnaturally still body assuring himself that his younger brother was in fact breathing.

"Jarod?"

"I need some time."

Isabelle didn't argue or mention the fact that they were wasting time. She simply nodded and backed away to give him some space.

He tried to make some sense out of his thoughts. Therese was here. Ethan was here. So even if Catherine had taken Parker and run for it, the Centre must have caught up with them somewhere along the way. Had they gotten all of them?

He shuddered as he remembered the earlier lack of expression in Ethan's eyes. That wasn't his brother in there. What had been done to him in this place? Kyle at his worst moments had never looked that . . . what should he even call it blank, lacking in emotion, gone? Thinking about Kyle Jarod felt an overwhelming urge to check up on the rest of his family.

"Could we go find my family?" He asked Isabelle who was standing in the corner studying her nails in an attempt to be unobtrusive. Jarod felt a rush of appreciation for her attempt to afford him some privacy.

"Are you done here?"

"Can't we come back?" Isabelle snuck a look at the figure on the bed.

"We can."

In all his years of dreaming about his family, Jarod had never pictured finding them as an unpleasant experience. They started with Kyle. He was still in prison. Jarod dug out his file (intangible did have its perks). He asked Isabelle why it was that he could touch some things but not others. She laughed at him and said he should just let things be what they were. Was he supposed to understand that?

Kyle had been arrested under different circumstances and almost two years later than he had been in Jarod's own timeline. They hadn't been quiet years. There were two more years worth of people who had been unfortunate enough to cross paths with Kyle at his most unstable. The visitor's log showed only Dr. Raines. He checked the hiding spot where he had once found Angelo's letters, but it was empty. The notebook was still there, and it contained the same message scribbled over and over and over again. Kyle himself was laid back on his bed staring at the ceiling as he pointed out imaginary constellations to a nonexistent audience.

Jarod had always understood the concept of chain reactions, but it was something entirely different to watch the unraveling of one such set of events play out in front of him. This universe had had no Catherine Parker seeking out his parents to offer her assistance. The reason for Kyle's later capture was, of course, the fact that no assistance from Catherine Parker meant that there was no Harriet Tashman involved. Without Harriet's involvement, there had been no safe place for his parents to go while his mother was pregnant with Emily. They had been on the run the entire time, and the stress had taken its toll. Emily had come early. She had come far too early in fact, and she had survived less than an hour after her birth.

His parents had been forced to split up when they were almost caught mere days after her loss. They hadn't found each other again. Each had spent decades on their own mourning for three children who had been taken from them. On this particular Christmas Eve, they were each alone. Both were spending the evening keeping vigil with a few cherished pictures. Neither seemed to really believe that their situation would ever change.

Of course, all that information wasn't simple to gather. It took much time, much piecing together, and the discovery on Jarod's part that apparently Isabelle could also jump him backwards and forwards through the time of this place at will. If he had started the evening emotionally exhausted, he didn't know what to call what he was now. Did everything always have to be so bleak for his family? What had they done to make them such an appealing target? Was it merely that they existed? Why could they not ever just be left alone?

Should he be glad that this Kyle was still safely tucked in a prison cell? It wasn't the best life to have, but he was alive. His parents were safe. They weren't really happy. They weren't together, but they were safe. He realized with a start that he was following Isabelle's earlier suggestion that he pay attention to the good tucked in with the bad. He wasn't sure when he had started; it was just that everything he was seeing was so depressing.

He looked up to realize that Isabelle had returned him to Ethan's room while he was thinking. He never would have dreamed at the start of this 'adventure' as she had called it that he would have become comfortable enough with her to let his guard down that far. It had sort of crept up on him.

He checked his brother to find that he was still under the effects of the sedative. He had checked in on almost everyone who was important to him. He was trying to decide the best way to approach the subject of going to see Parker (since Isabelle seemed to be so unnaturally resistant to the idea), when the sound of some sort of altercation outside the door drew his attention. He stepped into the hallway to find that the source of the noise had been an argument between the sweepers on guard duty and Therese.

"I'm making a Christmas visit," she was saying in a voice that screamed barely contained agitation. Jarod felt a small smile flit across his face at the familiarity of the tone. It somehow managed to be rather patronizing and vaguely threatening at the same time. It must be a family talent. "I know it's late, but it has never been a problem before. I always make Christmas visits. I suggest you get out of my way."

One of the sweepers (looking blatantly aggravated by the fact that she hadn't simply done as she was told and walked away) lifted a hand as though he were going to physically push her away from the door, but the other sweeper laid a hand on his arm to stop him. The second sweeper spoke up quickly in an apologetic tone.

"I'm sorry, Miss Parker," he placed a huge emphasis on her name (clearly for the benefit of the other sweeper). "That is not going to be possible. I'm afraid he has had a rather bad night. He hurt himself pretty badly before they could get him restrained. There's to be no visitors."

"If he's hurt," Therese began to argue with the man again (completely ignoring the other Jarod noted), "that's all the more reason for someone to check on him. If he's having one of his episodes, then I can help." The same sweeper continued in his apologetic voice.

"I'm afraid our instructions were very clear on this matter. The medical orders are for rest with no interruptions. He can't be disturbed. They also don't want anyone, nonmedical of course, in there in case he has another spell. We can't violate Dr. Raines' instructions. We could get fired. You wouldn't want that, would you?" The resolve in Therese's voice was wavering although her eyes had narrowed at the mention of Raines' name.

"If I could just check on him?" She asked hopefully. The sweeper gave her what was intended to be an understanding smile.

"I really am sorry, but what if he took another turn, and you got hurt? I would feel terrible on top of being fired. It's really not fair to ask me to put myself in that position, is it?" The sweeper was laying it on really thick.

Therese opened her mouth, but no words had a chance to come out. Another sweeper had rounded the corner and all three of them had turned to look. Therese looked happy to see him, but Jarod couldn't figure out why that would possibly be. Maybe it was personal bias, but he didn't see that that man's presence was anything to get excited about.

"Sam!" Therese actually sounded relieved. "What's going on tonight? Why are they posted down here? What happened to Ethan? Where were you? Why won't they let me see him?" Sam smiled at her.

"Slow down there, kiddo, you going to give me a chance to answer any of those questions?" Therese looked unamused.

"He was having one of his bad spells." Sam began. "It took awhile to get him calmed down. I'm not sure of all the details. I got pulled to cover another area for a few hours, so I wasn't around when it happened. They," he nodded at the two sweepers still standing between Therese and the door to Ethan's room, "will be leaving now that I'm back."

He paused and looked pointedly at the two who took the hint and headed toward the elevators. "They don't want anything to get him stirred up again. It was pretty bad. He knocked himself around really good before anyone could get to him. I think it's better if you don't go in there tonight."

"I want to check on him." Therese insisted.

"He will be fine," Sam told the girl in a reassuring tone, "but you don't need to see the shape he's in right now. It's not pleasant, and there is nothing you can do for him. You should come back when he's better. That way he can enjoy your visit. All right?"

Therese gave one last longing look at the door. Sam placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze. "It's really better if you don't, kiddo. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it." Therese looked up at the man.

"He needs things to be familiar so that . . ." Sam cut her off.

"I'm not going anywhere." He said to her in a tone Jarod didn't want to admit sounded sincere. Loyalty popped up in the strangest places. Apparently, some things never changed.

Therese nodded in acknowledgment of the man's promise. She walked off down the hallway with her head hanging. Whether it was in thought or defeat, Jarod couldn't tell.

Something wasn't adding up here. He took off down the hallway not in the direction that Therese had headed, but in the one that led to the elevators. He caught up with the two sweepers just as their elevator door was sliding shut.

"Man do I ever owe you." The sweeper who had been about to shove Therese was saying. Jarod noticed that the man was looking rather pale.

"Yeah, you do." The second sweeper replied with a soft chuckle. "I'm sure I'll think of some way that you can repay the favor."

"Miss Parker." The man's voice suddenly switched to consternation. "Here I thought the duty rosters getting all switched around was going to be a nice change of pace. I coulda ended up in the renewal wing. They should warn a guy about things like that. What's she doing skulking around down here anyway?" The second sweeper shrugged his shoulders noncommitally.

"You do many rotations on the sublevels, and you see her around. She calls it visiting." The man shook his head. "I don't know what her father's thinking letting her roam around down here. All these whackjobs. She's a nice enough kid, though. Usually real polite. I can't imagine what she wanted in to see that one for. Broke Smitty's arm. With him in a straight jacket. That's just dangerous. If she was my kid, I would put a stop to it real quick, but I guess it ain't my place. If she gives you any trouble, give her the sob story about how you can't risk being fired. That usually works real nice."

The two men exited the elevator, but Jarod remained behind. He needed to think. Someone had gone to quite a bit of trouble. Changing the entire duty roster to put unfamiliar people close to Ethan, waylaying medical orders, and an unexpected trip for Ethan were not things that had happened by coincidence. Where had the unexpected trip taken him? It had to have been to do something to upset him. That was the only scenario that made sense. What could it have been? It suddenly struck Jarod that he was acting like an idiot. Why wonder about it when he could know? He turned to Isabelle. She was smirking at him.

"It took you long enough," she commented. "Yes, I can take you to see wherever it was."

"Are you playing around in my head again?" He frowned at her.

"Please, Jarod, like that would even be necessary. I can practically see the wheels turning in your head. Has anyone ever told you that for someone who spends his life pretending to be things that he isn't, you are awfully easy to read?"

The sim lab to which they jumped was unusual in that it had an air of permanence about it. Furniture and props were usually obviously temporary and not overly sturdy in nature. This one had an untouched air about it with a coating of dust visible on the surfaces. It was a simple scene. It appeared to be an ordinary living room. There was a sofa, an overstuffed arm chair, some lamps, and all the other normal furnishings. Some school books were scattered across the coffee table, and a half-finished sheet of calculus problems lay on the top. There was nothing to give a clue as to why it would have a devastating effect on Ethan. He turned back to Isabelle.

"Why didn't you just take me to when Ethan was here?" He asked a little snippily.

"Did you really want to watch your little brother have a meltdown?" She questioned. "Did you want to watch him get beaten again knowing that you can't intercede?"

She had a point. Jarod didn't like it, and he would probably never tell her that he actually appreciated the consideration, but she was right. As much as he wanted to understand what had happened, watching family members injured in front of you was a situation he would rather avoid.

That left thinking things through. He could do that. It had to have been Raines. That much was obvious. Why? What did he gain by torturing Ethan? Jarod rolled his eyes. It was Raines. He didn't necessarily have to have a reason, however, this wasn't his spur of the moment kind of work. The man was capable of being calculating, and this had been carefully orchestrated.

Then, it hit him. It wasn't about Ethan at all. Ethan was considered a failure as a project. Mr. Parker had said as much earlier. It would never occur to Raines to blame himself for that failure. He would blame Ethan. Therefore, Ethan existed to be punished or used as the occasion warranted until it was time to discard him. Jarod shuddered at the brush with the inner workings of Raines' mind. That was also something he would rather avoid. Unfortunately, it seemed to be necessary to understanding this whole mess.

Ethan wasn't the target of all this. He was just a tool. The conversations had implied that Therese would be expected to visit him tonight. Raines had told Gar earlier that they didn't have much time to take care of a 'special project.' It had been about Therese.

Raines had decided to up the ante in his villain of the piece roll. It was about getting to Therese. It was about giving Therese one more reason to be afraid of Raines. Raines was just twisted enough to do it anyway even though there had been a chance that Therese wasn't going to get the message. It all made perfect sense (which was sad in and of itself).

When he had said earlier that Therese would need help, Isabelle had said that it wouldn't come from him. She was right. He, the one who was standing here watching these events play out, couldn't do anything about it. The other him though, the one that lived in this timeline, he was still a possibility. And there was always . . .

"Angelo." Jarod said looking over at Isabelle. "I need you to take me to find Angelo."

Isabelle nodded and moved to take his hand in her own. Jarod expected to blink and see his old friend, but all he saw was the same living room scene of the sim lab. Isabelle was frowning as an expression of deep concentration spread across her features. After a moment, she let go of Jarod's hands and shook her head in disappointment.

"I'm sorry." She told him.

"What? What is it? Can't you find him?" Jarod asked confused. She hadn't had any trouble with any of his other trip requests.

"I can't find him because he isn't here." Isabelle said as if she were reluctant to give him the information.

"I don't understand." Jarod was starting to feel like he was uttering those words every few minutes.

"I can take you to see anyone who exists in this world." Isabelle explained. "Angelo doesn't exist in this world."

"That doesn't make any sense." Jarod told her. (He was feeling like he was saying or thinking those words an awful lot tonight as well.) "You said we split off where Catherine Parker tried to save the children. There was already an Angelo at that point in time." A look of surprised hopefulness crossed his face. "Is he still Timmy?" He asked her. Isabelle shook her head again.

"I'm sorry, Jarod, he's gone." A look of understanding appeared briefly before being replaced with confusion.

"But we went to Catherine Parker's grave. We saw where they buried Emily." Isabelle looked sympathetic and as though she dreaded the words about to come out of her mouth.

"We went to the memorials for those people." She continued with as much gentleness as the words could convey. "There isn't any memorial for your friend. There's no spot dedicated to his memory. I'm sorry."

"He died here then." Jarod replied slowly. "They wouldn't have cared enough." He shook his head to clear it making a decision. "I want you to take me to see me."

"Are you sure you're ready for that?"

"I want to know."


	10. Chapter 10

The room that they entered (Jarod vaguely registered that Isabelle had brought him directly instead of making him walk through any walls) was downright Spartan in nature. There was a narrow bed, a flat topped desk against the wall, and a single straight backed chair. There were no splashes of color and no unnecessary items. It felt very like Kyle's prison cell.

It should have been odd to be standing there looking at himself a few years younger, but it wasn't. Maybe he had spent too much time watching DSAs. The only odd thing in Jarod's mind was that this room wasn't the right one. He turned to find Isabelle hanging back by the door.

"I, he," Jarod corrected himself (this was going to get confusing quickly), "shouldn't be here. They should have moved him to that apartment room years ago - the one with all the colorful furniture that was supposed to make me forget I was trapped." Isabelle gave him a long suffering look as she once again shrugged her shoulders.

Jarod turned back to the version of himself seated cross legged on the bed. An open notebook was laying across his lap, and he was scribbling across the pages with a look of intense concentration. He was younger (if Isabelle's explanation of the timeline was correct, and he had no reason to believe that it wasn't), but he didn't really look it. His shoulders sagged not with tiredness (although he looked that as well) Jarod realized but with an air of someone who felt weighted down. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes. Clearly, he hadn't been doing much sleeping.

A tray with a standard Centre issue meal lay untouched on the desk. Wait. It wasn't untouched. The exact amount needed to keep the medical team from intervening was gone from the tray. The memory that explained how Jarod was in possession of that particular piece of information was one that he preferred not to relive, so he pushed it away from his thoughts.

Whatever was going on with this other him, he was doing it to himself. Sydney's words forced themselves back into his memory. He hadn't been talking about another project. He had been talking about Jarod. Mr. Parker had said that Raines had received clemency for a huge mistake because it caused this Jarod to be cooperative. In his own world, he had always been questioning. When the answers finally added up, he had run away.

This Jarod, he could tell, didn't ask questions. He did what he was told because he didn't care. The limited food intake, the prison like setting, and the denial of sleep were all self-inflected punishments.

Raines had done something, and this Jarod must blame himself for causing it. What would cause this kind of a reaction? Sydney said it had been years. Sydney had also said something about a tragic death.

That sinking feeling settled back into his stomach. It must have been Angelo. Memories of Raines supervising as a young him had poured acid over Kyle's hand swirled around the back of his mind. That man was more than capable of setting up a scenario that could have led to Angelo's death.

Had it been a sim gone wrong? Or, knowing Raines, one gone wrong by design? How was it that the more he looked into everyone else at the Centre, the more complex they became, but the more he looked at Raines, the only thing he saw more of was evil? It was like he was a caricature of a human being gone wrong.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door sliding open. He looked over to find that Therese had entered. He smiled in spite of his dark thoughts. He had momentary visions of a visiting angel making the rounds to relieve whatever suffering she could find. Her mother would be proud of her.

Then, he caught sight of her face. This was not the same girl who had talked J.J. back from wherever Raines had sent him. It was not the same girl who had wanted to take care of Ethan, or even the one who had coaxed a few moments of regular humanity out of Lyle. Coldness radiated from this girl in waves. Why ever she was here, it wasn't to offer any comfort.

The man on the bed was still too involved in his work to notice her presence, so she cleared her throat. It echoed in the otherwise still room. He dropped his pencil and looked at her with haunted eyes. Their eyes locked for a moment, and the Jarod of this time winced. He meekly held out a hand, and Therese reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She handed it over without a word, and the man nodded in acceptance. Therese walked out.

What was that all about? Jarod edged closer so he could see what it was that the man on the bed held. He didn't get a chance because the other Jarod was rushing to the desk. He yanked open the bottom drawer and pulled out a handful of small papers which he began to spread out in a semi circle on the floor surrounding the spot in which he was kneeling.

Jarod could see them with no difficulty now. They were all identical simple white paper cut outs in the shape of a rabbit. The Jarod on the floor sent one fleeting glance at the security camera before somehow managing to squeeze himself into the small space between the desk and the corner. It was, Jarod realized, the only place in the room that was blocked from the camera's view. It was the only place in the room where there was a modicum of privacy. The man huddled with his arms wrapped around his legs as he cried with deep, gut wrenching sobs.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He repeated over and over again.

Jarod was sure that the other him would be rocking himself if the space in the corner had allowed for the motion. He wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't going to burst into tears himself. He spun around to find Isabelle. He knew he was shouting. He knew that it wouldn't do any good, but he couldn't seem to stop himself from doing it anyway.

"What did I do?" He demanded. "What did I do to her? Where is she?" He felt the first trickle of tears working their way down his cheeks, but he still couldn't seem to get his voice under control.

"I wouldn't have hurt her." He pleaded, but he wasn't sure with whom he was pleading. "Please, please, where is she?" But he knew the answer. The self-punishment, Therese's animosity, and the white rabbits scattered on the floor could all only mean one thing. He had killed her.

He took deep gasping breaths as he tried to stop himself from descending into sobs. He didn't want it to be true but nothing else matched with the facts playing out before him.

"I just wanted her to get away." He spoke the defensive words with desperation knowing that they wouldn't change what had occurred. "I just wanted to finally save someone. Why can't they ever let anyone get away? Why can't they ever let someone leave? Was it so much to ask for that just one of us would have gotten to have a real life?"

He felt Isabelle put a tentative hand on his arm, and he launched himself at her sobbing into her shoulder. She let him cry for a few moments uninterrupted while he attempted to force himself to calm down.

Why couldn't he get himself under control? This was not his reality. He did not have to live with this. He kept repeating the phrases, but the words offered him no comfort. He couldn't get anything right. Different lives and different decisions still ended up with everything all wrong. What had they all done to deserve to be so perpetually miserable? Why was it always them?

"Jarod. You don't know what happened." Isabelle attempted as his crying began to come under control.

"Yes, I do." His tone was adamant.

"You think you do, but you might be wrong." Jarod pushed himself away from her.

"Do you honestly believe that?" The words were more a challenge than a question.

"I don't know." Isabelle insisted. "You don't know either. You only think it. You haven't seen what happened. All I know is that no matter what happened, it isn't your fault. You take too much blame for too many of the wrong things."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Jarod demanded. Isabelle looked at him with a pained expression in her eyes.

"Do you want to go look?" She didn't sound happy about it even as she made the offer.

"No!" Jarod said so quickly even he wasn't sure that he had had time to process her question. "I can't. I can't watch that."

"You don't know . . ."

"I know." He said with finality before changing tracks. "I want some answers. I want to understand this place before I leave."

"I always thought your natural curiosity would work with me eventually." Isabelle said with a sad smile. "I know you're hurting, but you need to learn from this. You need to take some of what you are seeing here and apply it back to your reality." Jarod rolled his still wet eyes.

"You aren't getting any less cryptic. I thought we had moved past that. If there is something that you want me to know, I wish you would just tell me instead of making me dig through all of this pain to find it."

"I wish I could, Jarod." Her voice had gone soft and sincere. "The problem is that I don't know what all is here to see, and I don't know which part of it is what you need to make you understand." Her face suddenly lit up as if she had had an idea. "But you do, and I think you are finally ready to piece it all together." She looked at the huddled figure in the corner before taking Jarod's hand and dragging him towards the door.

"But you aren't going to do it here." She stated determinedly. She marched him down the hallway peering into various rooms along the way.

"What are you looking for?" Jarod demanded exasperatedly. What was she going to do to him now?

"I'm looking for someplace that is quiet. I'm looking for someplace that doesn't feel like an institution. Does this place have any rooms like that? We need someplace where you can do some thinking without being distracted." She paused looking at the somber white walls that extended the length of the hallway. "Maybe we should go to a beach."

Those words had barely left her mouth when she pulled him into one more room and stopped short. Jarod looked around the security surveillance station to see what had distracted Isabelle's attention. It was deserted except for a lone figure curled up in a desk chair staring at the monitor in front of her. It was Therese again. He wasn't really surprised to see her. For the most part, she seemed to care about the people that he cared about. It made sense that their paths would continue to cross.

Jarod shook off Isabelle's hand and moved to see what she was watching. It was the feed from Ethan's room. She ran a finger over the screen, and Jarod realized that she was measuring to make sure that she was in fact seeing the movement of their brother's chest rising and falling.

The girl was teary eyed and had a guilty look about her that told Jarod she had watched the surveillance of the sweepers and somehow figured out that Raines had done it for her benefit. He wished he could tell her it wasn't her fault. She hadn't asked to be born into the Centre's twisted world. She was whispering, and Jarod moved closer to catch what she was saying.

"I'm sorry, Mama. I'll take better care of him. I promise I will. Bobby's getting better, and we can go soon. Bobby, Ethan, Jay, and I will all go far, far away, and I'll never let him hurt any of them again." A few tears escaped and began to leave trails down her face as she continued. "It is so my fault. I'm here to look after them, and I didn't do my job. I have to do better. I will do better." Her voice suddenly took on a harsher edge.

"He is not my responsibility. No, I didn't write your message. You know that I didn't, so why do you even ask? I don't care if he misunderstands." She was getting louder, and her face was making the transition from upset to angry. "Good!" She said insistently. "He should feel guilty. He was not your friend! Friends don't do that to each other."

Her angry expression faded into one of intense concentration, and Jarod wondered if she had enough control to make the voices go away. He supposed she did as he watched the tension slowly disappear. She looked back at the monitor, and adjusted the settings so that it showed a split screen of both Ethan and J.J. The two were both sleeping and as safe for the moment as anyone inside the Centre could be. She stared at the two of them long and hard watching the breathing of their respective forms. The tears began to build up in her eyes again, and she began talking only to herself.

"They are both fine. They are okay. Bobby is going to be fine. I'll get them all out soon. It won't happen again, not to any of them. I'll do better. I have to do better. They need me. It's going to be okay."

She suddenly reached up and typed a command that returned the feed to Ethan only. Jarod watched as several days worth of video rewound at high speed. She found the point she was looking for and stopped the backwards progression. Ethan was sitting on the floor of the room.

Jarod couldn't see his eyes, but he was very sure that the man in the picture was still not his Ethan. He wondered if there were ever any moments where it was his Ethan, or if he was completely and irretrievably gone in this version of time. Ethan was banging his head against the wall as if trying to drive something out of it while he shouted in a tortured, haunted voice.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Therese froze the screen and stared at the picture with some bizarre combination of fascination and fear.

"It won't be me." She said in what was intended to be a self-reassuring tone of voice. "It isn't me. I can make it go away. I can control it." The reassurance of the tone was lost by the end of the statement, and Therese was sobbing as she buried her head in her knees. Jarod wondered if she realized that she was almost exactly mirroring the posture of the man she had recently left behind in his cell. "I have to control it. It can't be me. They're counting on me."

Jarod edged away knowing that there was nothing he could do for her. She had to be around fifteen. How much pressure could she take before it broke her? She couldn't be expected to come riding in to save the day for everybody. It wasn't possible. She was fighting something huge and insidious, and it was ridiculous of her to expect to be able to do it all on her own. No one could expect that of themselves. He caught himself in the middle of the thought and felt his face flush.

"Made the connection, have you?" Isabelle's voice came from over by the door, but Jarod didn't want to look at her.

"It isn't the same." He insisted, but the words felt foolish even to his own ears as he spoke them.

"Really?" She asked him. "What makes it so different?"

"She's too young." He tried, but he knew even as he said it that the woman behind him wasn't going to accept his answer.

"So, twenty years from now, everything that happens here will be all her fault?" Isabelle inquired.

"No, that's not what I meant." He sighed. "It's just different, okay?"

"No, it's not okay, Jarod." He could tell from the inflection in her voice that Isabelle had found her opening and wasn't going to be backing down. "How is it that you can see so clearly where she is wrong in her thinking, but you can't see the flaws in your own?"

"You just don't understand." Jarod told her sighing in frustration. "You can't be expected to understand."

"Explain it to me." Isabelle insisted.

She had moved them to a new place again. They were standing on the sea shore. The stars were bright in the clear sky, and the waves sounded a gentle background rhythm as they washed up on the sand in front of them. It would be much more pleasant to get lost in the beauty of the sea and the sky than to keep thinking the thoughts that Isabelle was pushing him to think.

Unfortunately, the night wasn't really there for him to enjoy. It was a backdrop. It was something that she thought would be soothing while she poked and prodded at his feelings. He was so tired of being poked and prodded. Why couldn't he just be left alone? That would be wonderful if it weren't for the fact that when he was left alone all the things inside his head continued the poking and prodding. He rolled his eyes at the thought. He even poked and prodded himself.

"It's not different, Jarod." Isabelle's voice was still insistent. "When are you going to stop holding yourself responsible for everything that isn't your responsibility?" He sighed and turned to face her.

"What is it that you want from me exactly?" He began becoming more and more exasperated as he spoke. "I was well on my way to giving up and letting everything go, and you had to come pushing in where no one wanted you. Now you're trying to convince me to believe that none of it was mine to own from the start. Which is it?" Isabelle shook her head.

"You don't pay attention to what I'm saying, Jarod. I said you needed to let go of the things that weren't yours. I didn't say you should walk away from the things in your life that are your responsibility. You went from trying to single handedly carry the world on your shoulders to giving up on your life in the course of a couple of days. It never occurred to you that there was something between the two extremes? Talk to me. You say that I don't understand. Make me understand. What is it that you know that I'm not seeing?"

"It's an all or nothing deal." Jarod replied in a resigned tone of voice. "Either I can fix it, or I can't. It's one or the other. I used to think that it was fixable. Now I know that it's not."

"What is 'it'?" Isabelle inquired.

"Everything that goes wrong," Jarod explained throwing his hands out in progressively broader gestures as he continued, "the people who use other people like they are somehow less than human, pick any of it. My life, our lives, all of us that the Centre infected. I can't fix it because we were all screwed from the moment that they decided to pick us."

"Or you could fix what you can when you can and not let the rest of it bury you." Isabelle said calmly.

"I tried that!" He exclaimed angrily. "That's what got me here. There was always something more. There was always something left undone. There was always a new place to go and twelve others that got ignored while I went there. It was too much. I couldn't do it all!" Jarod stopped, panting as the words left his mouth. Isabelle smiled softly at him.

"No, you couldn't." She replied to his statement. "Nobody could. The things you couldn't do weren't the ones that mattered. What mattered were the ones that you could. Are there people in the world that you haven't helped? Of course there are. You can't be omnipresent, Jarod. You're human. Guess what? The ones you couldn't help wouldn't have been any more unhelped if you hadn't been trying. But the ones you did help, what about them? What would have happened to them if you hadn't tried? It isn't a balance sheet, Jarod. It isn't just you against everything bad or wrong in the world. The next thing you are going to be telling me is that you think you are a god just like Raines."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it? How else would you be able to do everything that you seem to expect yourself to be able to do?" She demanded. "Jarod decides what wrongs get righted. Jarod decides who is punished or rewarded. Jarod decides who will be relieved or left to suffer."

"Don't."

"Is it like that, Jarod? Is that what you wanted?"

"No! I just want things to be better than they are."

"That's what we all want. Fight your battles, Jarod. Fight them the best way you know how, but don't think that you are alone in this. They may be your battles, but the war isn't yours."

"I don't . . . ," he stopped midsentence.

"You don't what?"

"I don't know how to do that." He told her. "They raised me to fix their problems. I don't know how to leave something unfixed. I was always supposed to try harder. I was supposed to think it through more. I was supposed to find a way. It was always up to me. They never taught me what to do when I couldn't find a way."

"Or when there wasn't a way for you to find?" She asked.

"There is always something."

"But that something isn't always you. Sometimes that something needs to come from someone else."

"I don't know how to do that either."

"To do what?"

"To trust that someone else can do something that I can't."

"So, we are a little arrogant." She stated smiling at him.

"It isn't funny."

"I said we, didn't I?" She reminded. "There was a time when I didn't much want to trust other people."

"Was a time?"

"I realized that I didn't much like the live I was living like that. I realized that I was missing out on some things, some people that I would rather not miss. I realized that there were people I needed because I couldn't do everything that needed to be done without them."

"There are people you shouldn't trust."

"Of course there are, Jarod. Do you want to lose out on the people you should trust because of them? You learn to tell the difference. Every once in a while you make a mistake. You cut your losses, you dust yourself off, and you count your blessings that the people you can trust were around to have your back." She took a long, assessing look at him before she continued. "Is it messy? Does it hurt sometimes? Yes and yes, but it's also beautiful and joy filled and so very worth it. It's life, Jarod. We weren't meant to go through it untouched by our surroundings. What would be the point of that?"

"What if there isn't anyone I can trust?" He asked her.

"You don't really believe that." She dismissed.

"Maybe I do." He insisted.

"Just because people do things that you don't understand, that doesn't mean that they are working against you." She paused and sighed again taking in his defiant stance. "Look, you said you wanted to figure this place out. Why don't you take some time and do that? See if making sense of things here provides you with any more little gems of enlightenment."

"Are you enjoying this?" He asked her disbelieving.

"I'm happy that you are starting to recognize some patterns." She answered. "I'm glad that I didn't go through all this for nothing. I'm glad that you didn't go through all of this for nothing. I think that you are actually going to take some useful insights with you when we leave. If that counts as enjoying, then yes. I am enjoying this." Jarod gave her one more disbelieving look before he settled into a comfortable position on the sand and began to talk things through out loud.

"Catherine ran away with Parker. I did something that got her killed." He tried first.

"Jarod!" Well, he hadn't figured she would let that fly, but she was being annoying again.

"Fine." He stated. "I'll go for the less obvious. Ethan was born somewhere on the outside. So even though Catherine ran away, the Centre caught up with them at some point in time. They weren't going to just let her go, especially since she had two of their subject children with her. They don't just let anyone leave." He paused for a moment in contemplation.

"They took Ethan. They turned him over to Raines, and Raines messed with him until it broke his mind. Catherine must have succeeded in staying away from the Centre for long enough for Ethan to be old enough to remember what the outside was like. That's why Raines couldn't place him with a foster family the way he did the first time or the way he did with Lyle. He was too old for that to be feasible. He couldn't take the chance. He had to remain inside the Centre, but he was still too young to hold up under the type of pressure Raines put on him. Screwing up children is, after all, Dr. Raines speciality. Am I on the right track?" Isabelle glared at him.

"Fine. You don't know." Jarod responded to the glare. He found himself letting go of his earlier animosity as he started to string the pieces of the puzzle together. He had wanted to know after all. It was also nice to have a large chunk of pieces to fit together all at once for a change.

"They lost," his voice wavered, but he pushed forward with the line of his thinking, "Parker somehow, so they needed another Red File. They needed another girl. They're ultimately eugenesists, and they won't believe that they have truly succeeded until they have a dominant bloodline that requires no outside interference to perpetuate itself." He paused again. He wasn't sure that he wanted to delve any further into that line of thinking at the moment.

"They used Catherine because they still had access to her, and she was a proven subject. They still wanted the cross with the inner sense and Project Prodigy and that outweighed any concerns that they had about her age. Ostensibly, the child was supposed to be Mr. Parker's because he needed an heir. He needed a legacy. Raines used someone else for his own reasons, but it worked out in Mr. Parker's favor. He gets all the glory of being a model Centre employee without any compunctions from his conscious because he knows that Therese isn't his." He stopped and stared out at the water for a long moment. Isabelle didn't comment. It was good to know that she wasn't going to be pushy. He might need some time to process some of this. Pieces of it were difficult to accept.

"Either Catherine died from complications of childbirth, or they disposed of her soon after. They had their girl child, and they knew from experience that Catherine would be a constant hindrance to their plans." He continued. "Therese knows that Mr. Parker is not her father. Catherine probably told her. Catherine probably also taught her how to control her voices. She keeps up the pretense because she knows that it gives her a measure of power within the Centre. She probably also knows who her real father is and thinks that the charade helps to protect him." He stared blindly out over the water as he tried to make sense of Therese.

"She's spent her childhood in the Centre, but she has been outside occasionally. Her 'father' takes her on carefully orchestrated outings that are designed to make her feel like she isn't really a prisoner. She knows better. She knows about Ethan. Deep down she's afraid that it wasn't really Raines who made him the way that he is. She's scared that it's the inner sense, and that someday it's going to happen to her as well. She met J.J. in some designed accident, and the powers that be do their best to make them think that they are sneaking around to see each other. They know that the aura of rule breaking appeals to both of them. It's a way that they fight back against their controlled environments. The people in charge want it that way. They want the two lonely children from opposite ends of the Centre's hierarchy to find each other. It's almost like they are recreating my . . . ," Jarod stopped and closed his eyes for a moment before he continued.

"They are recreating my past. They replaced Parker and me with Therese and J.J." He lifted his head to locate the spot where Isabelle was standing a few yards away.

"Are the things that are true here true in my reality as well?"

"I don't know what you mean, Jarod."

"The plotting, the projects they mention are they the same in my reality?"

"I don't know. It would depend." Jarod nodded and redirected his gaze out toward the sea.

"We used to think that we were very clever and daring. We would sneak around and be so impressed with ourselves that we had eluded the cameras and spent time together without anyone knowing. Maybe we weren't as clever as we thought." He sighed. "Maybe they wanted us to spend that time together. We were far too young, but maybe they wanted that comradery to build. Maybe they wanted us to think that it was us against the world." He lifted a handful of sand and let it slowly slip through his fingers to rejoin the rest of the beach.

"I don't know whether it's more disturbing to think that some of the best moments of your childhood were actually designed by people that you hate or to know that even given that that you wouldn't want to change them." He pushed on with his train of thought.

"I was angry at her father for a long time for sending her off to school, for taking her away from me. It didn't really have anything to do with me. He was protecting her the only way he knew how. He needed our bond to break because it was the only thing that would keep her from being used the same way they are going to use Therese. In spite of everything that he did to her, even with all the deceit, he always insisted that it was for her own protection. Maybe he actually believed that it was." Jarod was silent for several moments as he let those new thoughts soak into his system. He had never understood Mr. Parker, and the direction of these thoughts were not making the man any less confusing.

"Sometimes people do things for reasons that we can't understand, Jarod." Isabelle's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Why didn't he send her away completely if he cared so much?" He questioned, knowing that she wouldn't be able to give him any answers. "He used her so many times. Why was that one so different?"

"Almost everyone has their line that they won't cross." Jarod laughed, but the sound contained no humor.

"That's some line."

"You can't possibly know his reasons. You can't even really know if that's what actually happened."

"It makes sense."

"Jarod, have you considered . . ."

"That I shouldn't assume that I know why she does the things that she's doing either? You're too late. I jumped to that thought ages ago. It's hard for me to go there. I don't like to be wrong."

"And being wrong in this case wouldn't be a good thing?"

"I see your point, but even if I was wrong, she's doing her level best to push me out of the way." Jarod shook his head and continued. "Enough of that. I'm figuring out this world, not mine."

"I think we've already established that they are interconnected."

"Granted, where was I? J.J. He's older than he would have been in my reality. He's got to be somewhere around seventeen. Why the age difference? Mr. Parker said that Donoterase was a model of inefficiency. I assumed he meant because it took so many resources to get J.J. What if they didn't get J.J.? With Parker suddenly gone, there would have been a certain level of panic. They had taken a huge set back. They were going to have to restart their project in a lot of ways. As crude as it makes me feel to even contemplate it, they would have had to have thought it through and realized that their goal was not going to be accomplished with me and a girl who would be less than half my age. They needed a new male subject as well, but their cloning experiments weren't having any level of success. They needed something faster - a tried and true method. They already knew selective genetics. They just had to apply them. They couldn't use my parents. There were too many variables. They had to start with their end product and make sure the desired strains repeated in the next generation. J.J. isn't my clone. He's my son, or he's his son. Is there a difference?"

Isabelle didn't offer him an answer. He hadn't really expected one.

"Raines just dangles information about him being a clone to make him feel like he is less than human. Raines is like that in any universe. Catherine talks to Therese, so Therese would have known that Lyle was her brother. That's why he is already acknowledged in that roll. He's still dangerous, but Therese doesn't really see that when she looks at him. She sees Bobby. She sees the older brother that she could have had if things had been different. She trusts that that is who he is inside. That kind of trust can kill you."

"Or set you free?"

"Exactly how long have you been tailing me?"

"Is that at all relevant to your current thought processes?"

"She sees both Lyle and Ethan as damaged. She thinks that she is their only family, so she believes that she is responsible for their well being. She honestly believes that the four of them can run away and make it."

"You don't think they can?" She asked.

"I've never seen anyone truly get away from the Centre unless they were dead." He replied.

"But they were all trying to get away on their own." Jarod stared at her for a moment before he responded.

"Catherine Parker." He stated simply.

"Catherine Parker confided in Mr. Raines. Need I say more?" Jarod didn't really have a reply for that one, so he turned the topic of conversation.

"Angelo didn't die in a sim gone wrong. He was disposed of because Raines had turned him in to something that they couldn't control. He didn't have any use. In the beginning, he hid in the vent system and wouldn't come out for anything. He wouldn't do anything. Nothing that anyone tried worked. Parker figured out the way by accident. Only Parker wasn't there, so there were no Cracker Jacks."

"Cracker Jacks?"

"There's something about my life that you don't know?"

"You're sounding really bitter, Jarod. I thought we were past that. Need I remind you of the number of people that you have spied on over the course of the past few years?"

"Point taken."

"It's different when it's you, isn't it?"

"I said point taken." Jarod repeated. "They used Cracker Jacks to get Angelo to cooperate. Parker had brought some with her down to the sublevels once, and any way the point is that without that trick, there was no method to get him to channel his skills. Therefore, he was a failed project with no further use."

"Did you try?" Isabelle asked him.

"Did I try what?" He asked confused.

"To help Angelo in the beginning?" She said as if that were obviously what she had been asking, and he was dense not to have known.

"Of course I did." He replied.

"But you couldn't." She retorted.

"Didn't I just say that?" He asked her.

"Because it was something in need of fixing by someone else?" She reiterated her point. Jarod rolled his eyes.

"You are really close to crossing the line into obnoxious." He warned her. She didn't look overly concerned.

"You only say that because you know that I'm right." She insisted before topic jumping. "Have you pieced together everything that you wanted to piece together about this place?"

"Everything except how I killed her, but I'm not really sure that I want to know that."

"Jarod," she reprimanded.

"It's a fact, Isabelle." He told her in as calm of a voice as he could conjure. "Pretending otherwise isn't going to change that. She's dead. I don't care if we didn't actually go to see her die. I'm in there punishing myself because I know that I killed her. Therese hates me because she knows that I killed her. She's probably inside Therese's head telling her to give me paper rabbits to make sure that I don't forget that I killed her."

"Did you even listen to the conversation that Therese was having back there?" Isabelle asked.

"Did you? 'He should feel guilty.' 'Friends don't do that to each other.' Ring any bells?"

"How about 'No, I didn't write your message' or 'I hope he misunderstands' either of those ring any bells for you? Whatever happened, Parker doesn't blame you, Jarod. She wanted Therese to tell you that, but she refused."

"It doesn't matter."

"I think it does."

"Well, it's not your life."

"It's not yours either." She reminded. They both stood in the sand facing each other with nearly identical glares. Jarod broke first.

"What now?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On what you are going to do when you get back to your reality."


	11. Chapter 11

"You want me to go back?"

"Isn't that what you've wanted all along?"

"I thought we were going to . . . ," Jarod stopped in mid sentence. Isabelle looked at him with a smile on her face.

"You thought what?"

"I thought we were going to stay until it was finished. I want to see." He admitted.

"You want to see what, Jarod?" Isabelle asked in a confused sounding tone of voice, but he could see the twinkling she was trying to disguise in her eyes. There was something seriously strange about this woman – strange and not just a little bit disturbing.

"Do you always make people work so hard?" He challenged her while avoiding her direct question.

"Most of the time." She readily admitted before turning serious. "You know that finished is a rather subjective term?"

"It's not fair to want me to care, to convince me to be involved, and then to ask me to leave without knowing how they will be." Jarod countered.

"You're right. It isn't fair, but life isn't fair." Isabelle paused as she took in Jarod's frown and a determined look spread across her face.

"But you've had enough of stuff that isn't fair, haven't you, Jarod? I've had way more than I needed as well. We'll stay as long as you want, or at least as long as we can. We will eventually run out of time, and I can't be sure when that will be."

"Thank you." He told her accepting her answer with the sincerity in which it had been offered.

"You really shouldn't." Isabelle replied smiling at him again. "I want to know what's going to happen every bit as much as you do. It's not like I'm being unabashedly altruistic here. I also think that the more you see, the more likely you are to use it later." She paused and offered a concerned look in his direction. "I can't promise you this is going to be pleasant."

"I didn't think it would be." Jarod conceded.

"Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Where would you like to start?" She inquired going into business mode.

"Let's follow Therese." Jarod decided after a few seconds. "She seems to be the connecting point for everything." Isabelle nodded in agreement, she reached over, and they moved.

Sydney's office looked much as it always had – clean, organized, immaculate even, a place for everything and everything in its place. Except on this particular occasion there was one thing, one person who would have been decidedly out of place in the world in which Jarod was accustomed to living. Therese was perched in a chair beside Sydney's desk patiently waiting for his appearance. Or not so patiently, if her foot tapping was any indication of her current mental state.

Sydney didn't even notice her when he first walked in the door he was so busy agitatedly flipping through a file that had obviously (to Jarod who usually knew how to read him anyway) made him angry. He got all the way to the desk before he even registered her presence.

"Miss Parker!" Jarod couldn't decide whether the man sounded more surprised at her presence or perturbed that his solitude had been invaded. He smiled in spite of his concern over what had Sydney riled. He knew that feeling of privacy invasion perturbation very well.

"Therese." She corrected in a soft voice.

"Miss Parker," he continued, "I'm going to have to . . ."

"Therese." She insisted again with just a little more volume. Sydney sighed and looked at the girl who was looking expectantly up at him.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave." He stated in that clinical, detached tone he used when he was trying to make you believe that he really didn't care what it was you wanted.

"But I wanted to talk to you today." The girl stated sounding suddenly unsure as she took in both Sydney's tone and appearance. Jarod, experienced enough to know when Sydney's temper was at the breaking point, could tell that the man was barely holding himself to the civil words that passed his lips.

"I'm afraid I haven't time today." He stated in a stilted tone of voice. "You should return to your tutor."

"It's Jarod, isn't it?" The girl asked in a tone that tried to be sympathetic but held an undercurrent that indicated there was something about the topic that bothered her. "You're worried about him."

"I believe that I asked you to vacate my office." Sydney said neither looking at her nor acknowledging her statement beyond an involuntary increasing tension across his shoulders.

Therese didn't take the hint. She planted herself more firmly in her chair and looked up at him with a questioning expression on her face. Jarod knew that was a bad move. She wasn't going to be able to talk to Sydney when he was like this. He was liable to blow up at her.

"I'm sorry that he treats you badly." She told him. "Why do you stay? Why do you put up with it all? Don't you think you would be happier somewhere else? Why don't you just go somewhere without all this pressure? Why don't you get away?" She inquired. Jarod could tell that she really meant the questions. She was trying to understand the man. He also knew that in Sydney's current state he wouldn't take it that way. He would only hear that she was prying.

He winced as his assessment of the situation proved true. Sydney couldn't hold his pretense of calm detachment together any longer, and he slammed the file folder down on his desk and shouted at the girl in front of him.

"Out! Now!" Therese stumbled out of her chair in shock while the expression on her face changed to something infinitely sad. Jarod knew that Sydney was too engulfed in his anger to notice the change that took place in the girl's features. She looked lost, slightly shattered even, as though she had just realized something that upended her universe.

"It isn't about your work. It's personal." She blinked repeatedly as she said the words. "You stay because of him." She added so quietly that Sydney probably didn't even hear her. "You stay because you love . . . him." The girl spun around to collect herself out of Sydney's line of sight, but before either of them could speak or leave the door to the office opened once more. The wheezing sound that always accompanied Raine's approach filled the room.

"Miss Parker," his voice scratched out. "I have an appointment. Shouldn't you be attending to your course work at this time of day?" He turned to speak over his shoulder into the hallway where Jarod could just make out J.J. accompanied by Gar. "Take him to the sim lab on this floor. We'll be working there today. I'll be along shortly."

Therese pushed past Raines to enter the hallway where Gar was leading J.J. away. The boy looked over his shoulder at her hopefully, but she rolled her eyes in Gar's direction. J.J. immediately whipped his head to face front. Jarod wondered if they really thought that they were fooling anyone. But he hadn't been any different in his childhood.

"We have things we need to discuss." The unmistakable sound of Raines' voice echoed into the hallway.

"Decided it was no use to hide him from me any longer?" Jarod could hear the strain in Sydney's voice as the office door closed.

He looked at Therese but she was already too far down the hallway (in the opposite direction that J.J. had taken) to have heard. He followed her as she took a long route to the lab and hung back waiting for Gar to exit. As she walked in to greet the eagerly waiting teenager, Jarod turned to face Isabelle.

"He's her father, and she knows, doesn't she? It's Sydney." Isabelle shrugged her shoulders in what he now considered her characteristic gesture.

"Jarod," she began.

He cut her off, "I know." He stated exasperatedly. "I wasn't really asking you to supply me with outside information. It was more like asking for confirmation that I am seeing what I think I am seeing. Could I get a little cooperation here?" Isabelle chuckled.

"If we are going on purely what I am seeing, then I'm going to have to say that I'm inclined to agree with you."

"Thank you." Jarod told her. "Was that so difficult?"

"She's jealous, I think." Isabelle said ignoring his sarcasm. Jarod shook his head.

"It's not really jealousy – not the way you usually use the word. It's hard to explain."

"You know this from experience?" She asked him.

"Let's just say that that is one particular road that I have been down before." He replied.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Do I ever want to talk about it?"

"A girl can hope that you might change your mind. It might do you some good to stop bottling everything up inside all the time."

"I had a personal shrink for most of my life," Jarod reminded her. "It didn't exactly help."

"I'm not talking about a shrink, Jarod. I'm talking about a friend." She shook her head when he remained silent. "You're missing what they are saying." She reminded him nodding her head at the sim lab door.

"I don't need to hear what they are saying. They're friends. They're visiting. They're talking about everything and nothing all at once. They're just enjoying being with each other."

"Another road you've been down?"

"You're catching on," he offered her a smile.

"Why didn't you stay and listen to Sydney and Raines then?" She inquired with a curious glance in his direction.

"I've spent enough time in Raines' company. It's not going to do me any good to know what he is plotting when there is nothing that I can do to stop it. I said we would follow her and see how things went. It's worked out so far," he said shrugging his shoulders. "I'm going to stick with it."

At that moment, a gun shot rang out from down the hallway. Jarod's initially shocked expression quickly turned to one of anger. It was unclear for a moment who was going to make it down the hall first – himself or Therese who had come sprinting out of the sim lab with J.J. not far behind her.

In the end, it was Jarod who went through the door. It wasn't because he had been any faster, but rather because of the sweepers who had moved to intercept Therese. For once, just this once, Jarod was grateful that they were around to interfere. She didn't need to see this.

Sydney was draped across the desk blood seeping from the side of his head with a gun clutched in his hand. The Centre, Jarod knew, would automatically deem it a suicide. They always did. It was their standard operating procedure. And thinking back to the conversation he had listened to Sydney share with Jacob, he told himself that he couldn't be entirely sure that it hadn't been.

Sydney had been upset about something. That something was more than likely his discovery of the existence of the boy. The conversation with Therese had pushed him. Who knew what Raines had said to him? He had been feeling trapped and useless. If he knew what the boy really was, this failure to protect Jarod might have been the final straw that pushed him over the edge.

It would not have been a possibility for his Sydney of course – not the one who had raised him. But this Sydney, this Sydney who had beaten his head against the brick wall that was Jarod's stubbornness for so long that he didn't know what else to do could have come to that point. It could be. It might be. That didn't mean that it was.

That's not what Therese would think he knew. Therese would only see that Raines had been there. That's what would stick in her mind, and for all Jarod knew that could be exactly what had happened. Sydney would have been just one more piece for Raines to maneuver in his attempt to be what was it he had told Mr. Parker? He was going to be the best villain he could be.

Jarod didn't really want to know. He would leave that for Therese to figure out if she could. Either way there was nothing he could do about it. There wasn't anything that she could do about it either. That realization that the truth wouldn't change the fact that Sydney was lying dead in his office hurt worst of all.

He could tell that it was later, but how much later he wasn't sure. They were back in J.J.'s sorry excuse for a room. J.J. and Therese were both sitting on his bed crosslegged with their backs against the wall. Therese looked numb. J.J. looked desperate for something to say or do. It was clear that he was used to being the one that got comfort in their relationship. He wasn't sure how to go about being the comforter.

"Who was that man?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. You're upset."

"I'm fine." He reached over and took hold of her hand.

"No, you aren't." Therese didn't look at him and didn't respond.

"I don't know how to do this." He said in a choked sounding voice. That got her attention. She looked at him confused.

"Do what?"

"I don't know how to be you."

"J.J." she sighed. "You aren't making any sense."

"You always do this. You always know the right thing to say. You always know the right thing to do to help me. I don't know how to help you. It isn't fair." She gave him a half-smile.

"I do a lot of guessing."

"You're a really good guesser then."

"It's alright." She told him reassuringly while she squeezed the hand that was holding her own .

"I'm okay." He shook his head.

"I don't believe you. Come here." He tugged at her hand and brought her down to lay her head on his lap. He hesitated for a moment before pulling the pony tail holder from her hair and beginning to untangle her braid. He was managing to look nervous and concerned and a little bit ashamed all at the same time. Jarod knew that he was enjoying his position and feeling guilty for it.

"This is backwards." Therese commented.

"It shouldn't be." J.J. responded with a hint of anger in his tone. "It shouldn't always be you taking care of me. We're supposed to take care of each other. I've been very selfish. I'm sorry."

Therese shot up so quickly that she narrowly avoided knocking the back of her skull into J.J.'s jaw.

"Don't say that." She had ended with her face mere inches from the boy's. He was looking at her in surprise. "You have nothing to be sorry about. You are the most unselfish person I know."

The expression in J.J.'s eyes had gone from surprise to something entirely different, and Jarod knew what was going to happen before the two teenagers themselves probably realized. He turned away, once again feeling like a voyeuristic intruder as the boy leaned forward. Isabelle took the hint.

This time he found himself back in Therese's apartment. Lyle was pacing back and forth muttering to himself and looking utterly miserable. Jarod really didn't find himself feeling very sympathetic. Before he could figure out what Lyle was saying, they had jumped again.

Therese was working at a computer shuffling finances and stringing together chains of accounts. The jumps began to go by so quickly that Jarod barely got his bearings in each new space before they left it. The only constant to the images seemed to be Therese.

J.J. had his arm around her as she wrote him notes about their escape plan so that the camera couldn't see. Lyle was telling her that it was too dangerous for all four of them to try to leave at the same time. He was volunteering to watch out for Ethan while she got J.J. settled.

Jarod tried to push himself past his unease at her trust in Lyle while he watched various pieces of their exit strategy fall into place. Then, it was time, but something had gone wrong. J.J. was tugging at Therese's arm pulling her down a hallway away from a bleeding Lyle who was shouting at her to go.

The two were outside in the dark and alarms that were all too familiar to Jarod were going off all around them. Therese was pushing J.J. away from her and telling him to flag down a car on the highway. He watched as she turned to go back and a confused, crying J.J. stumbled off into the woods. The bits and pieces were just enough to let him put a vague sense of what was happening together. He didn't know if J.J. would be able to make it on his own.

Nobody payed much attention to traveling adult males, but a boy in his late teens who acted confused and far too young for his age was liable to draw a dangerous amount of attention. She shouldn't have left him.

It wasn't a fair thought, and he knew it. If it had been Kyle or Emily or Ethan back there bleeding on a Centre floor, would he have been able to walk away? Then, he remembered that she was just a teenager herself. Would the two of them have gotten very far at all? Wouldn't the teenage couple have absolutely screamed runaways? He found himself wishing he had been able to see more of their planning. He turned to face Isabelle (who he now realized had paused because she wasn't sure whether he wanted to follow Therese or J.J.).

"Why were we going so fast?" He asked her.

"We're running out of time." She told him apologetically.

Jarod stopped to think through the implications of that. He was not going to get to find out everything that he wanted to know. He was going to have to make a choice. He still wasn't sure that he really did want to know exactly what had happened to her, but he knew if he didn't find out he would regret not finding out when he had the chance. He did want to know what was going to happen to the two teenagers as well, but he wanted to know what had happened to her more.

"In that case, could we . . ." He didn't even finish the sentence before Isabelle caught on to what he was asking.

"Are you sure?" She questioned.

"I think it will be better if I know." He explained.

"All right." She said.

"Could we go a little slower?" He stopped her before she took his hands. "I want to be able to really pay attention. I know we might run out of time, but I'm willing to take my chances."


	12. Chapter 12

"Are you telling me that the pretender is becoming lonely?" They seemed to have jumped into some sort of meeting. Raines was questioning a middle aged woman with whom Jarod was unfamiliar.

"It is hitting late in his adolescence, but it is a perfectly normal developmental milestone." The woman replied. "I am sure that you have been informed previously that the relative isolation would eventually lead to issues of this kind." Raines turned to another woman who had been observing the back and forth between the other two from the far side of the room.

"Madame Director," he stated in a voice free from its usual wheeze. It was always strange to see the Raines of the prefire years. The dragging tank and struggling breathing seemed to match his personality so well. "in light of this information, I would request a period of time to work with the subject in question. I feel that I can resolve this issue in combination with a long standing Centre problem in one fell swoop. The timing is obviously correct."

"I know to what you are referring, and I am not certain I am comfortable discussing granting such wide sweeping authority without including the chairman in the discussion." The director countered.

"With all due respect," Raines replied, "you know that Mr. Parker was removed from the chain of command on Project Eden a long time ago. I see no reason to reverse that decision now. His, shall we say, lack of clarity on this particular subject will not have changed." The woman considered his words for a moment before inclining her head to demonstrate that his point was granted.

"And what of Sydney?" She asked him. "You believe he should be excluded from this matter?"

"Send him to a conference." Raines said with a dismissive hand gesture. "It was always intended that he be uninvolved in this project. His lack of cooperation in this matter has always been expected."

"How much time do you foresee requiring?" The woman continued, still not giving the man overt permission to proceed.

"How long can you give me?" He countered.

"There is a three week possibility in Geneva that Sydney could reasonably be expected to attend." She offered.

"Three weeks it is then." Raines accepted the terms.

Jarod and Isabelle jumped to a sim lab that Jarod knew very well.

"You and I have had our disagreements, Jarod, but I need your help."

A teenage Jarod stared sullenly at the wall refusing to acknowledge Raines' statement.

"Where is Sydney?" His voice carried an aura of repetition as he folded his arms across his chest.

"There was a little girl you met here long ago." Raines told the boy ignoring his question. "Her name was Miss Parker. Do you remember her?" The young pretender perked up in spite of himself and made eye contact with Raines.

"She went away to school." The teen stated.

"That's what they told you, Jarod. I'm afraid that they lied." The boy sat up at attention.

"I don't understand."

"Have you and Sydney ever done any simulations involving the behavior of cult members, Jarod?"

Jarod stood watching the two in disgust as Raines spun his tale for the boy's benefit. He should know better than to expect better but it crept up on him from time to time anyway.

"Doesn't her father miss her?" The young version of himself was asking. His earlier dismay at being expected to work with Raines seemed to have melted away during the man's story.

"Very much. He just wants his daughter to come home. You will help them, won't you? You will help to bring their family back together?"

Young Jarod was staring at the table in front of him with a concerned expression on his face. The adult Jarod was pleased to see that he wasn't quite so snowed that he didn't have any questions about Raines' story.

"I remember Mrs. Parker." The teen insisted. "She was very nice. I don't understand why she would . . ."

Raines cut him off before he could finish verbalizing his doubts.

"Sometimes nice people are the most easily taken advantage of, Jarod. It's very sad, but it unfortunately happens. We want to help her. We want to help them both." The man gave Jarod an appraising look before continuing in a different tone of voice.

"Miss Parker is going to need a friend when she gets back, you know. She's going to need someone close to her own age to talk to and help her through what has been happening to her."

The hope filled light in the boy's eyes was almost enough to make Jarod sick to his stomach.

"A friend?" The boy rolled the word slowly off his tongue as if it were something sacred.

"I know you keep very busy, Jarod," Raines continued in his companionable tone, "but I had hoped we might persuade you to spend some time with her. We had hoped that you might be willing to be that friend."

"I'll never understand," Jarod said to Isabelle, "how someone so seemingly devoid of all human emotions can still manage to play on other people's so easily." The grown man shook his head as he looked at his younger self.

"He's going to find her for them. I should be upset with him that that was all it took, but I don't know that I wouldn't have been the same." Jarod laughed, but it was devoid of humor. "I guess I do know that I would have been the same. I'm watching it happen." They jumped forward again, but Jarod could feel that only a few days had gone past.

"You did excellent work, Jarod." Raines was saying to the boy. "We've located the house where she has been staying. Your simulations were perfect. We are going to bring her home tonight."

Young Jarod nodded only half listening to the praise. It was easy to see that his mind was occupied with daydreams of the future Raines had implied that he would be receiving.

"I was wondering if you would like to go with us?" Raines asked him unexpectedly.

"Sir?" The teen questioned as if he were not certain that he had heard the man correctly.

"It's going to be frightening for her, Jarod." The man replied. " Her father has been out of town on business, and we haven't been able to get a message to him. It would be nice for her to have a familiar face, would it not?" Raines paused and looked at the teenager contemplatively. His voice was so smooth and filled with just the correct amount of forced concern that it made Jarod cringe to hear it.

"It would be scary to have people you don't know whisk you away from the place you believe to be your home, don't you think? She's going to need someone that she trusts to be there for her. She will need someone she knows to explain that everything will be all right."

"You want me to go outside? To bring Miss Parker home?" The boy questioned disbelieving.

"Only if you would like to go." Raines stated in the kindest voice he could muster. "If you would rather stay here with your work, I would understand."

And with that, Jarod knew, the battle was over. Whatever Parker's fate had been, this was the moment that had sealed it.

It wasn't something, however, that he was going to be able to see. Black spots were swimming in front of his eyes, and everything was going blurry. The last thing that he managed to focus on was the sound of Isabelle's voice telling him that she was sorry and that he should use what he had learned. Whatever the mysterious time limit was, it had run out.

Jarod's head jerked up from the table of his temporary crashing point. His head was killing him, and he was all alone with one very unbroken bottle of questionable contents balanced precariously on the edge of the table next to his hand.

. . . . . . .

Far away and hours before a dark haired woman in a lonely house slammed a telephone down on her bedside table in frustration. She laid herself back down against her pillows and sighed as a wave of exhaustion washed over her.

What was it going to take to get him to cut off contact and go underground? This constant breadcrumb trailing had to stop. What did she have to say? How hard did she have to push him to get him to leave?

It would be easier if she could just tell him she reflected, but when had anything about their lives ever come under the heading of easy. No, telling him wouldn't work.

She had already pondered that possibility and dismissed it. He was fundamentally incapable of not meddling. He would never let her just go through with her plans without trying to be involved. He had to remain ignorant. It was the only way. Given that he had to be ignorant, he also had to break ties and go away. He needed to be so focused on his own hiding that he had no time to spare for goings on at the Centre.

If he saw the pieces before everything was in place he was liable to try something stupid. Something like riding in on that perpetual white horse of his to save the day. He would get them all killed going off on one of those half-cocked crusades of his. It had to be this way.

She needed time, and she needed him out of the way. If damaging those fragile feelings of his was the only way to accomplish that, then so be it. Maybe he would understand one day and maybe he wouldn't. She couldn't help that. This was what was best for all of them. This was the only way.


End file.
